blog/tags/english/english.rss

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   3         <channel>
   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged english</title>
   5                 <description>Entries tagged english</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Oct 2013 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
  15 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
  16 these. :)&lt;/p&gt;
  17
  18 &lt;p&gt;Via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/&quot;&gt;Debian
  19 Project News for 2013-10-14&lt;/a&gt; I came across the Outreach Program for
  20 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
  21 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
  22 to match &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.ch/opw2013&quot;&gt;any donation done to Debian
  23 earmarked&lt;/a&gt; for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
  24 hope you will to. :)&lt;/p&gt;
  25
  26 &lt;p&gt;And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
  27 create video documentaries about the excessive spying on every
  28 Internet user that take place these days, and their need to fund the
  29 work.  I&#39;ve already donated.  Are you next?&lt;/p&gt;
  30
  31 &lt;p&gt;For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
  32 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
  33 statement under the heading
  34 &lt;a href=&quot;http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/&quot;&gt;Bloggers United for Open
  35 Access&lt;/a&gt; for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
  36 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
  37 too.&lt;/p&gt;
  38 </description>
  39         </item>
  40
  41         <item>
  42                 <title>Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</title>
  43                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html</link>
  44                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html</guid>
  45                 <pubDate>Fri, 11 Oct 2013 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
  46                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
  47 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
  48 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
  49 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
  50 successful examples like
  51 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freifunk.net/&quot;&gt;Freifunk&lt;/a&gt; and
  52 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awmn.net/&quot;&gt;Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network&lt;/a&gt;
  53 (see
  54 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece&quot;&gt;wikipedia
  55 for a large list&lt;/a&gt;) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
  56 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
  57 can be seen from their
  58 &lt;a href=&quot;http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html&quot;&gt;dynamically
  59 updated node graph and map&lt;/a&gt;, where one can see how the mesh nodes
  60 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
  61 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
  62 and that is the main topic of this blog post.&lt;/p&gt;
  63
  64 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
  65 to do it as part of my involvement with the &lt;a
  66 href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG member organisation&lt;/a&gt; community, and
  67 my recent involvement in
  68 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox&quot;&gt;the Freedombox project&lt;/a&gt;
  69 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
  70 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
  71 when possible, given that most communication between people are
  72 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
  73 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
  74 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
  75 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
  76 important over the years.&lt;/p&gt;
  77
  78 &lt;p&gt;So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
  79 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
  80 &lt;a href=&quot;http://hackeriet.no/&quot;&gt;Hackeriet&lt;/a&gt; at Husmania.  They seem to
  81 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
  82 &lt;a href=&quot;http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page&quot;&gt;the Oslo
  83 Freifunk project&lt;/a&gt;, but that effort is now dead and the people
  84 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
  85 &lt;a href=&quot;http://meshfx.org/trac&quot;&gt;meshfx&lt;/a&gt;.  Unfortunately the wiki
  86 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
  87 reflect this fact, so the old project page can&#39;t be updated to point to
  88 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
  89 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
  90 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
  91 speakers about this talk (from
  92 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY&quot;&gt;youtube&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;
  93
  94 &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width=&quot;420&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  95
  96 &lt;p&gt;I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
  97 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
  98 figure out which one would be &quot;best&quot; for some definitions of best, but
  99 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
 100 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
 101 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
 102 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
 103 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.servalproject.org/&quot;&gt;Serval project in Australia&lt;/a&gt;
 104 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
 105 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
 106 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
 107 that project (from
 108 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA&quot;&gt;youtube&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;
 109
 110 &lt;p&gt;&lt;iframe width=&quot;560&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 111
 112 &lt;p&gt;According to the wikipedia page on
 113 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network&quot;&gt;Wireless
 114 mesh network&lt;/a&gt; there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
 115 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
 116 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
 117 based community mesh networks.&lt;/p&gt;
 118
 119 &lt;p&gt;The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
 120 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
 121 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
 122 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
 123 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
 124 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
 125 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide&quot;&gt;good
 126 introduction&lt;/a&gt; is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
 127 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:&lt;/p&gt;
 128
 129 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
 130 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Setting&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Value&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 131 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Protocol / kernel module&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;batman-adv&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 132 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;ESSID&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;meshfx@hackeriet&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 133 &lt;td&gt;Channel / Frequency&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;11 / 2462&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
 134 &lt;td&gt;Cell ID&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;02:BA:00:00:00:01&lt;/td&gt;
 135 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 136
 137 &lt;p&gt;The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
 138 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
 139 VillageTelco about
 140 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html&quot;&gt;Information
 141 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!&lt;/a&gt;
 142 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
 143 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
 144 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
 145 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 146
 147 &lt;p&gt;My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
 148 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
 149 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
 150 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
 151
 152 &lt;p&gt;If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
 153 us on IRC, either channel
 154 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace&quot;&gt;#oslohackerspace&lt;/a&gt;
 155 or &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug&quot;&gt;#nuug&lt;/a&gt; on
 156 irc.freenode.net.&lt;/p&gt;
 157
 158 &lt;p&gt;While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
 159 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
 160 and Innovation called
 161 &lt;a href=&quot;http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf&quot;&gt;The
 162 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks&lt;/a&gt; and elsewhere
 163 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
 164 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
 165 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
 166 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
 167 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
 168 be interested in a cooperation?&lt;/p&gt;
 169
 170 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-10-12&lt;/strong&gt;: I was just
 171 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html&quot;&gt;told
 172 by the Serval project developers&lt;/a&gt; that they no longer use
 173 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
 174 mesh system.&lt;/p&gt;
 175 </description>
 176         </item>
 177
 178         <item>
 179                 <title>Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</title>
 180                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html</link>
 181                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html</guid>
 182                 <pubDate>Tue, 8 Oct 2013 17:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
 183                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
 184 Salvador had published a
 185 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc&quot;&gt;video on
 186 Youtube&lt;/a&gt; showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
 187 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
 188 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
 189 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
 190 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
 191 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
 192 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
 193 showing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zygotebody.com/&quot;&gt;Zygote Body 3D model
 194 of the human body&lt;/a&gt;, but I guess he did not know about those or find
 195 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
 196 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
 197 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
 198 computers without hard drives by installing one central
 199 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ltsp.org/&quot;&gt;LTSP server&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 200
 201 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:&lt;/p&gt;
 202
 203 &lt;iframe width=&quot;420&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;
 204
 205 &lt;p&gt;Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
 206 me know. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 207 </description>
 208         </item>
 209
 210         <item>
 211                 <title>Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</title>
 212                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html</link>
 213                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html</guid>
 214                 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Sep 2013 10:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
 215                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
 216 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
 217 complete announcement text can be found at
 218 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928&quot;&gt;the Debian News
 219 section&lt;/a&gt;, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.&lt;/p&gt;
 220
 221 &lt;p&gt;There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
 222 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
 223 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
 224 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).&lt;/p&gt;
 225 </description>
 226         </item>
 227
 228         <item>
 229                 <title>Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</title>
 230                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html</link>
 231                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html</guid>
 232                 <pubDate>Fri, 27 Sep 2013 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
 233                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Freedombox
 234 project&lt;/a&gt; have been going on for a while, and have presented the
 235 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
 236 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.&lt;/p&gt;
 237
 238 &lt;ul&gt;
 239
 240 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA&quot;&gt;FreedomBox -
 241 2,5 minute marketing film&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
 242
 243 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE&quot;&gt;Eben Moglen
 244 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
 245
 246 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g&quot;&gt;Eben Moglen -
 247 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
 248 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010&lt;/a&gt;
 249 (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
 250
 251 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE&quot;&gt;Fosdem 2011
 252 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
 253
 254 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s&quot;&gt;Presentation of
 255 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
 256
 257 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s&quot;&gt; Freedombox -
 258 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
 259 York City in 2012&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
 260
 261 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck&quot;&gt;Introduction
 262 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012&lt;/a&gt;
 263 (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
 264
 265 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ&quot;&gt;Freedom, Out
 266 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube) &lt;/li&gt;
 267
 268 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/&quot;&gt;Freedombox
 269 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013&lt;/a&gt; (FOSDEM) &lt;/li&gt;
 270
 271 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg&quot;&gt;What is the
 272 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
 273 2013&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;
 274
 275 &lt;/ul&gt;
 276
 277 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is available from
 278 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations&quot;&gt;the
 279 Freedombox Wiki&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 280
 281 &lt;p&gt;On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
 282 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
 283 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
 284 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
 285 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
 286 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
 287 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
 288 us on &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;IRC
 289 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)&lt;/a&gt; and
 290 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;the
 291 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; if you want to help make this vision come true.&lt;/p&gt;
 292 </description>
 293         </item>
 294
 295         <item>
 296                 <title>Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</title>
 297                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html</link>
 298                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html</guid>
 299                 <pubDate>Mon, 16 Sep 2013 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
 300                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
 301 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:&lt;/p&gt;
 302
 303 &lt;blockquote&gt;
 304 &lt;p&gt;Hi,&lt;/p&gt;
 305
 306 &lt;p&gt;it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
 307 short) of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
 308 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based on Debian Wheezy!&lt;/p&gt;
 309
 310 &lt;p&gt;Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
 311 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
 312 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
 313 if you find something, please notify us immediately!&lt;/p&gt;
 314
 315 &lt;p&gt;(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
 316 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)&lt;/p&gt;
 317
 318 &lt;p&gt;Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
 319 compared to beta1:&lt;/p&gt;
 320
 321 &lt;ul&gt;
 322
 323 &lt;li&gt;The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
 324 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.&lt;/li&gt;
 325 &lt;li&gt;Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
 326 understand ical/dav sources.&lt;/li&gt;
 327 &lt;li&gt;Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
 328 main server.&lt;/li&gt;
 329 &lt;li&gt;A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.&lt;/li&gt;
 330 &lt;li&gt;Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
 331 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
 332 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
 333 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).&lt;/li&gt;
 334
 335 &lt;/ul&gt;
 336
 337 &lt;p&gt;Where to get it:&lt;/p&gt;
 338
 339 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
 340
 341 &lt;ul&gt;
 342 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 343 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 344 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
 345 &lt;/ul&gt;
 346
 347 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f&lt;/p&gt;
 348
 349 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
 350 &lt;ul&gt;
 351 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 352 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 353 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
 354 &lt;/ul&gt;
 355
 356 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e&lt;/p&gt;
 357
 358 &lt;p&gt;The Source DVD image has the filename
 359 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
 360 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
 361 as the other isos.&lt;/p&gt;
 362
 363 &lt;p&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/p&gt;
 364
 365 &lt;p&gt;For information how to report bugs please see
 366 &lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 367
 368
 369 &lt;p&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/p&gt;
 370
 371 &lt;p&gt;Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
 372 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
 373 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
 374 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
 375 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
 376 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
 377 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
 378 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
 379 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
 380 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
 381 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
 382 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
 383 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.&lt;/p&gt;
 384
 385 &lt;p&gt;This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
 386 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
 387 Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
 388
 389 &lt;p&gt;Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases&lt;/p&gt;
 390
 391 &lt;p&gt;Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
 392 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
 393 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
 394 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
 395 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
 396 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
 397 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
 398 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
 399 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
 400 directory.&lt;/p&gt;
 401
 402
 403 &lt;p&gt;cheers,
 404 &lt;br&gt;        Holger&lt;/p&gt;
 405 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
 406 </description>
 407         </item>
 408
 409         <item>
 410                 <title>Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</title>
 411                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html</link>
 412                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html</guid>
 413                 <pubDate>Tue, 10 Sep 2013 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
 414                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I was introduced to the
 415 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Freedombox project&lt;/a&gt;
 416 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
 417 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
 418 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
 419 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
 420 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
 421 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
 422 control over their own basic infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
 423
 424 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
 425 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
 426 and privilege exercised by the &quot;western&quot; intelligence gathering
 427 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
 428 actually started working on the project a while back.&lt;/p&gt;
 429
 430 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/&quot;&gt;initial
 431 Debian initiative&lt;/a&gt; based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
 432 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
 433 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
 434 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
 435 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx&quot;&gt;Dreamplug&lt;/a&gt;,
 436 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
 437 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
 438 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
 439 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker&quot;&gt;freedom-maker&lt;/a&gt;
 440 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
 441 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
 442 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
 443 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
 444 missing in Debian).&lt;/p&gt;
 445
 446 &lt;p&gt;The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
 447 scripts
 448 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup&quot;&gt;freedombox-setup&lt;/a&gt;),
 449 and a administrative web interface
 450 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth&quot;&gt;plinth&lt;/a&gt; + exmachina +
 451 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
 452 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy&quot;&gt;privoxy&lt;/a&gt;
 453 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
 454 client (&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat&quot;&gt;jwchat&lt;/a&gt;)
 455 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
 456 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd&quot;&gt;ejabberd&lt;/a&gt;).  The
 457 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
 458 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
 459 this is really working yet, see
 460 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO&quot;&gt;the
 461 project TODO&lt;/a&gt; for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
 462 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
 463 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
 464 users.  I&#39;ve not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
 465 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
 466 with lots of half baked features.&lt;/p&gt;
 467
 468 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
 469 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
 470 at.&lt;/p&gt;
 471
 472 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Wheezy amd64&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 473
 474 &lt;ol&gt;
 475
 476 &lt;li&gt;Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.&lt;/li&gt;
 477 &lt;li&gt;Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.&lt;/li&gt;
 478 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
 479 to the Debian installer:&lt;p&gt;
 480 &lt;pre&gt;url=&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 481
 482 &lt;li&gt;Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
 483 install on.&lt;/li&gt;
 484
 485 &lt;li&gt;When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
 486 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.&lt;/li&gt;
 487
 488 &lt;/ol&gt;
 489
 490 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Raspberry Pi Raspbian&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 491
 492 &lt;ol&gt;
 493
 494 &lt;li&gt;Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.&lt;/li&gt;
 495 &lt;li&gt;Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.&lt;/li&gt;
 496 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:&lt;/p&gt;
 497 &lt;pre&gt;
 498 deb &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/&quot;&gt;http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox&lt;/a&gt; wheezy main
 499 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 500 &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Run this as root:&lt;/p&gt;
 501 &lt;pre&gt;
 502 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
 503    apt-key add -
 504 apt-get update
 505 apt-get install freedombox-setup
 506 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
 507 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 508 &lt;li&gt;Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.&lt;/li&gt;
 509
 510 &lt;/ol&gt;
 511
 512 &lt;p&gt;You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
 513 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
 514 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
 515 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
 516 short &quot;&lt;tt&gt;apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; away. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 517
 518 &lt;p&gt;Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
 519 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
 520 off the DHCP server by running &quot;&lt;tt&gt;update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
 521 disable&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; as root.&lt;/p&gt;
 522
 523 &lt;p&gt;Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
 524 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
 525 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox&quot;&gt;#freedombox&lt;/a&gt; on
 526 irc.debian.org and the
 527 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss&quot;&gt;project
 528 mailing list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 529
 530 &lt;p&gt;Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
 531 &lt;tt&gt;http://your-host-name:8001/&lt;/tt&gt; to see the state of the plint
 532 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
 533 get past it), and next visit &lt;tt&gt;http://your-host-name:8001/help/&lt;/tt&gt;
 534 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is &#39;admin&#39; and the
 535 default password is &#39;secret&#39;.&lt;/p&gt;
 536 </description>
 537         </item>
 538
 539         <item>
 540                 <title>Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
 541                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
 542                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
 543                 <pubDate>Thu, 22 Aug 2013 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
 544                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
 545 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
 546 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
 547
 548 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 549
 550 &lt;p&gt;These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 551 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
 552
 553 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 554
 555 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
 556 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
 557 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
 558 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
 559 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
 560 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
 561 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
 562 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
 563 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
 564 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
 565 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
 566 desktop contains
 567 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&quot;&gt;more
 568 than 60 educational software packages&lt;/a&gt; and more are available from
 569 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
 570 and Xfce desktop environment.&lt;/p&gt;
 571
 572 &lt;p&gt;This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
 573 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
 574 release.&lt;/p&gt;
 575
 576 &lt;p&gt;ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
 577 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
 578 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
 579 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
 580 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
 581 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html&quot;&gt;on
 582 the mailing list&lt;/a&gt;. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
 583 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
 584 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
 585 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
 586 CIFS access to their home directory.&lt;/p&gt;
 587
 588 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 589
 590 &lt;ul&gt;
 591
 592 &lt;li&gt;Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
 593     work also without a attached tty.&lt;/li&gt;
 594 &lt;li&gt;Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
 595     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
 596     tools. Please note, that the command &#39;update-command-not-found&#39;
 597     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
 598     required).&lt;/li&gt;
 599
 600 &lt;/ul&gt;
 601
 602 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 603
 604 &lt;ul&gt;
 605
 606 &lt;li&gt;Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
 607 needed for desktop=xfce installations.&lt;/li&gt;
 608 &lt;li&gt;Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
 609 stick ISO image.&lt;/li&gt;
 610 &lt;li&gt;Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).&lt;/li&gt;
 611 &lt;li&gt;Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.&lt;/li&gt;
 612 &lt;li&gt;Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
 613     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
 614     cope with this.&lt;/li&gt;
 615 &lt;li&gt;Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².&lt;/li&gt;
 616 &lt;li&gt;Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
 617     empty password hashes.&lt;/li&gt;
 618 &lt;li&gt;Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
 619     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
 620     from joining the Samba domain.&lt;/li&gt;
 621
 622 &lt;/ul&gt;
 623
 624 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 625
 626 &lt;ul&gt;
 627
 628 &lt;li&gt;KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
 629     not use the http proxy as it should.&lt;/li&gt;
 630 &lt;li&gt;Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
 631     (using the KDE configuration).&lt;/li&gt;
 632
 633 &lt;/ul&gt;
 634
 635 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 636
 637 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
 638
 639 &lt;ul&gt;
 640
 641 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 642
 643 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 644
 645 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
 646
 647 &lt;/ul&gt;
 648
 649 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
 650 &lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2&lt;/p&gt;
 651
 652 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
 653
 654 &lt;ul&gt;
 655
 656 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 657 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 658 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
 659
 660 &lt;/ul&gt;
 661
 662 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
 663 &lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119&lt;/p&gt;
 664
 665
 666 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 667
 668 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;
 669 </description>
 670         </item>
 671
 672         <item>
 673                 <title>Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</title>
 674                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html</link>
 675                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html</guid>
 676                 <pubDate>Sun, 18 Aug 2013 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
 677                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Earlier, I reported about
 678 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html&quot;&gt;my
 679 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk&lt;/a&gt;.  Friday I was
 680 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
 681 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
 682 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
 683 currently on the disk.&lt;/p&gt;
 684
 685 &lt;p&gt;I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
 686 &lt;a href=&quot;https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&amp;ProdId=3472&amp;DwnldID=18363&amp;ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&amp;ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&amp;ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&amp;lang=eng&quot;&gt;issdfut_2.0.4.iso&lt;/a&gt;
 687 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
 688 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
 689 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
 690 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
 691 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
 692 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
 693 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
 694 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
 695 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
 696 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
 697 the broken disks.&lt;/p&gt;
 698 </description>
 699         </item>
 700
 701         <item>
 702                 <title>90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</title>
 703                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html</link>
 704                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html</guid>
 705                 <pubDate>Fri, 2 Aug 2013 10:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
 706                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
 707 have worked on a Norwegian
 708 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version of the 2004 book
 709 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig,
 710 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
 711 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
 712 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
 713 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
 714 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
 715 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
 716 progress of the translation:&lt;/p&gt;
 717
 718 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;80%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 719
 720 &lt;p&gt;When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
 721 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
 722 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
 723 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
 724 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
 725 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
 726 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
 727 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
 728 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
 729 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
 730 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.&lt;/p&gt;
 731
 732 &lt;p&gt;There is still need for translators and people with docbook
 733 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
 734 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
 735 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
 736 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
 737 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
 738 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
 739 project files currently available from
 740 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 741
 742 &lt;p&gt;If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
 743 the updated
 744 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;
 745 and
 746 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true&quot;&gt;EPUB&lt;/a&gt;
 747 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
 748 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
 749 saw no point in linking to that version.&lt;/p&gt;
 750 </description>
 751         </item>
 752
 753         <item>
 754                 <title>First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
 755                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
 756                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
 757                 <pubDate>Sat, 27 Jul 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
 758                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
 759 today.  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
 760
 761 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
 762 2013-07-27&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 763
 764 &lt;p&gt;These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 765 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
 766
 767 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 768
 769 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
 770 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
 771 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
 772 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
 773 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
 774 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
 775 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
 776 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
 777 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
 778 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
 779 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
 780 desktop contains
 781 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&quot;&gt;more
 782 than 60 educational software packages&lt;/a&gt; and more are available from
 783 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
 784 and Xfce desktop environment.&lt;/p&gt;
 785
 786 &lt;p&gt;This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
 787 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
 788 Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
 789
 790 &lt;p&gt;ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
 791 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
 792 release.&lt;/p&gt;
 793
 794 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 795
 796 &lt;ul&gt;
 797
 798 &lt;li&gt;Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
 799    for network configuration, as wicd didn&#39;t work any more.&lt;/li&gt;
 800 &lt;li&gt;Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
 801    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
 802    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
 803    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
 804    and libpam-mklocaluser.&lt;/li&gt;
 805 &lt;li&gt;Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).&lt;/li&gt;
 806 &lt;li&gt;Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).&lt;/li&gt;
 807 &lt;li&gt;Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
 808    crash bugs.&lt;/li&gt;
 809
 810 &lt;/ul&gt;
 811
 812 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 813
 814 &lt;ul&gt;
 815
 816 &lt;li&gt;Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
 817    desktop=gnome installations.&lt;/li&gt;
 818 &lt;li&gt;Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
 819    netinst CD.&lt;/li&gt;
 820 &lt;li&gt;Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
 821    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.&lt;/li&gt;
 822 &lt;li&gt;Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
 823    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
 824    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.&lt;/li&gt;
 825 &lt;li&gt;Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
 826    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
 827    name setting at run time to work again.&lt;/li&gt;
 828 &lt;li&gt;Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
 829    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
 830    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.&lt;/li&gt;
 831 &lt;li&gt;Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
 832    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.&lt;/li&gt;
 833 &lt;li&gt;Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.&lt;/li&gt;
 834
 835 &lt;/ul&gt;
 836
 837 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 838
 839 &lt;ul&gt;
 840
 841 &lt;li&gt;Grub is missing the new artwork.&lt;/li&gt;
 842 &lt;li&gt;KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
 843     not use the http proxy as it should.&lt;/li&gt;
 844 &lt;li&gt;Chromium also fail to use the proxy.&lt;/li&gt;
 845
 846 &lt;/ul&gt;
 847
 848 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 849
 850 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
 851
 852 &lt;ul&gt;
 853
 854 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 855
 856 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 857
 858 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
 859
 860 &lt;/ul&gt;
 861
 862 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
 863 &lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f&lt;/p&gt;
 864
 865 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
 866
 867 &lt;ul&gt;
 868
 869 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 870 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
 871 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
 872
 873 &lt;/ul&gt;
 874
 875 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
 876 &lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733&lt;/p&gt;
 877
 878
 879 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 880
 881 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;
 882 </description>
 883         </item>
 884
 885         <item>
 886                 <title>How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</title>
 887                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</link>
 888                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html</guid>
 889                 <pubDate>Wed, 17 Jul 2013 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
 890                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I switched to
 891 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;my
 892 new laptop&lt;/a&gt;.  I&#39;ve previously written about the problems I had with
 893 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
 894 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html&quot;&gt;180
 895 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware&lt;/a&gt; that did not handle
 896 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
 897 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
 898 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
 899 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
 900 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
 901 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
 902 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
 903 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
 904 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
 905 station from now on.&lt;/p&gt;
 906
 907 &lt;p&gt;As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
 908 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
 909 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
 910 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
 911 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
 912 package &lt;tt&gt;ssd-setup&lt;/tt&gt; to handle this tuning.  The
 913 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git&quot;&gt;source
 914 for the ssd-setup package&lt;/a&gt; is available from collab-maint, and it
 915 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
 916 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
 917 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
 918 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.&lt;/p&gt;
 919
 920 &lt;p&gt;I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
 921 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
 922 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
 923 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
 924 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
 925 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
 926 parameters are tuned:&lt;/p&gt;
 927
 928 &lt;ul&gt;
 929
 930 &lt;li&gt;Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
 931     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)&lt;/li&gt;
 932
 933 &lt;li&gt;Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
 934     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
 935     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.&lt;/li&gt;
 936
 937 &lt;li&gt;Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
 938     systems.&lt;/li&gt;
 939
 940 &lt;li&gt;Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding &#39;discard&#39; to
 941     /etc/fstab.&lt;/li&gt;
 942
 943 &lt;li&gt;Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.&lt;/li&gt;
 944
 945 &lt;li&gt;Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
 946     cron.daily).&lt;/li&gt;
 947
 948 &lt;li&gt;Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
 949     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.&lt;/li&gt;
 950
 951 &lt;/ul&gt;
 952
 953 &lt;p&gt;During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
 954 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
 955 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
 956 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
 957 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
 958 from getting the data on the disk (see
 959 &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/538/&quot;&gt;XKCD #538&lt;/a&gt; for an explanation why).
 960 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
 961 right thing to do.&lt;/p&gt;
 962
 963 &lt;p&gt;I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
 964 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
 965 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.&lt;/p&gt;
 966
 967 &lt;p&gt;I also considered using the &#39;discard&#39; file system option for ext3
 968 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
 969 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
 970 instead of during my work.&lt;/p&gt;
 971
 972 &lt;p&gt;My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
 973 this is already done by Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
 974
 975 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
 976 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
 977 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.&lt;/p&gt;
 978
 979 &lt;p&gt;The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
 980 there.&lt;/p&gt;
 981
 982 &lt;p&gt;As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
 983 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
 984 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
 985 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
 986 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
 987 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
 988 back.&lt;/p&gt;
 989 </description>
 990         </item>
 991
 992         <item>
 993                 <title>Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</title>
 994                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</link>
 995                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html</guid>
 996                 <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
 997                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I wrote about
 998 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html&quot;&gt;the
 999 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk&lt;/a&gt;, which
1000 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
1001 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
1002 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lenovo.com/&quot;&gt;Lenovo&lt;/a&gt;, and they wanted to send a
1003 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
1004 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.&lt;/p&gt;
1005
1006 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
1007 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
1008 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
1009 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
1010 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
1011 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
1012 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
1013 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
1014 lock up when I download a new
1015 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; ISO or
1016 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
1017 the next proposal from Lenovo.&lt;/p&gt;
1018
1019 &lt;p&gt;The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
1020 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
1021 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
1022 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
1023 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
1024 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;
1025
1026 &lt;p&gt;The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
1027 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
1028 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
1029 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
1030 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5&quot; 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
1031 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.&lt;/p&gt;
1032
1033 &lt;p&gt;The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
1034 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
1035 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
1036 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
1037 exist).&lt;/p&gt;
1038 </description>
1039         </item>
1040
1041         <item>
1042                 <title>July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</title>
1043                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</link>
1044                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html</guid>
1045                 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Jul 2013 10:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
1046                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
1047 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
1048 party in Oslo.  It is organised by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the
1049 member assosiation NUUG&lt;/a&gt; and
1050 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1051 project&lt;/a&gt; together with &lt;a href=&quot;http://bitraf.no/&quot;&gt;the hack space
1052 Bitraf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1053
1054 &lt;p&gt;It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
1055 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
1056 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
1057 on &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo&quot;&gt;the event
1058 wiki page&lt;/a&gt; if you plan to join us.&lt;/p&gt;
1059 </description>
1060         </item>
1061
1062         <item>
1063                 <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</title>
1064                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</link>
1065                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html</guid>
1066                 <pubDate>Fri, 5 Jul 2013 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
1067                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
1068 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html&quot;&gt;replacement
1069 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41&lt;/a&gt;.  Unfortunately I did not have much
1070 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
1071 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
1072 ended up picking a
1073 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad X230&lt;/a&gt;
1074 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
1075 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
1076 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
1077 on that below.&lt;/p&gt;
1078
1079 &lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
1080 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
1081 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
1082 feature at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
1083 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
1084 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
1085 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
1086 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
1087 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.&lt;/p&gt;
1088
1089 &lt;p&gt;So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
1090 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
1091 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
1092 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
1093 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
1094 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
1095 needed a new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1096
1097 &lt;p&gt;Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
1098 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.&lt;/p&gt;
1099
1100 &lt;p&gt;But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
1101 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
1102 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
1103 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
1104 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
1105 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
1106 reported to Debian as &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/691427&quot;&gt;BTS
1107 report #691427 2012-10-25&lt;/a&gt; (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
1108 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
1109 kernel developers as
1110 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861&quot;&gt;Kernel bugzilla
1111 report #51861 2012-12-20&lt;/a&gt; (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
1112 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
1113 Lenovo forums, both for
1114 &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549&quot;&gt;T430
1115 2012-11-10&lt;/a&gt; and for
1116 &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147&quot;&gt;X230
1117 03-20-2013&lt;/a&gt;.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
1118 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
1119 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
1120 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
1121 There is even a
1122 &lt;a href=&quot;https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git&quot;&gt;small C program
1123 available&lt;/a&gt; that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
1124 minutes by writing to a file.&lt;/p&gt;
1125
1126 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
1127 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
1128 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
1129 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
1130 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
1131 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
1132 fixed. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1133 </description>
1134         </item>
1135
1136         <item>
1137                 <title>The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</title>
1138                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</link>
1139                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html</guid>
1140                 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Jul 2013 09:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
1141                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
1142 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
1143 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
1144 picking a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230&quot;&gt;Thinkpad
1145 X230&lt;/a&gt; with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
1146 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
1147 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
1148 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
1149 with an expencive door stop.&lt;/p&gt;
1150
1151 &lt;p&gt;I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
1152 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
1153 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
1154 feature at &lt;ahref=&quot;http://www.prisjakt.no/&quot;&gt;Prisjakt&lt;/a&gt;, which
1155 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
1156 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
1157 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.&lt;/p&gt;
1158
1159 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
1160 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
1161 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
1162 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
1163 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
1164 new laptop now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1165
1166 &lt;p&gt;I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.&lt;/p&gt;
1167 </description>
1168         </item>
1169
1170         <item>
1171                 <title>Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
1172                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
1173                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
1174                 <pubDate>Wed, 3 Jul 2013 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
1175                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1176 today.  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
1177
1178 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
1179 2013-07-03&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1180
1181 &lt;p&gt;These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1182 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
1183
1184 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1185
1186 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
1187 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
1188 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
1189 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
1190 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
1191 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
1192 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
1193 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
1194 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
1195 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
1196 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
1197 desktop contains
1198 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&quot;&gt;more
1199 than 60 educational software packages&lt;/a&gt; and more are available from
1200 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
1201 and Xfce desktop environment.&lt;/p&gt;
1202
1203 &lt;p&gt;This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
1204 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
1205 Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
1206
1207 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1208 &lt;ul&gt;
1209   &lt;li&gt;Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.&lt;/li&gt;
1210   &lt;li&gt;Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
1211     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
1212     brings KDE in line with the others.&lt;/li&gt;
1213   &lt;li&gt;Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
1214     they don&#39;t have a desktop menu entry and thus won&#39;t show up in the
1215     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.&lt;/li&gt;
1216   &lt;li&gt;Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
1217     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
1218     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
1219     too.&lt;/li&gt;
1220   &lt;li&gt;Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
1221     are too few to make the package useful.&lt;/li&gt;
1222 &lt;/ul&gt;
1223 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1224 &lt;ul&gt;
1225   &lt;li&gt;Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
1226   &lt;li&gt;Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.&lt;/li&gt;
1227   &lt;li&gt;Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
1228     up for some language options.&lt;/li&gt;
1229   &lt;li&gt;Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.&lt;/li&gt;
1230   &lt;li&gt;Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.&lt;/li&gt;
1231   &lt;li&gt;Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
1232     d-i is doing it.&lt;/li&gt;
1233   &lt;li&gt;Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
1234     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.&lt;/li&gt;
1235   &lt;li&gt;Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
1236     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
1237     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.&lt;/li&gt;
1238   &lt;li&gt;Update system to install needed firmware packages during
1239     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.&lt;/li&gt;
1240   &lt;li&gt;Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).&lt;/li&gt;
1241   &lt;li&gt;Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
1242     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.&lt;/li&gt;
1243   &lt;li&gt;LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
1244     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.&lt;/li&gt;
1245 &lt;/ul&gt;
1246 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1247 &lt;ul&gt;
1248   &lt;li&gt;No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
1249     available yet (698840).&lt;/li&gt;
1250   &lt;li&gt;Artwork not enabled for all desktops.&lt;/li&gt;
1251 &lt;/ul&gt;
1252 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1253
1254 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
1255 &lt;ul&gt;
1256   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
1257   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
1258   &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
1259 &lt;/ul&gt;
1260
1261 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
1262 &lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8&lt;/p&gt;
1263
1264 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
1265 &lt;ul&gt;
1266   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
1267   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
1268   &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
1269 &lt;/ul&gt;
1270
1271 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
1272 &lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721&lt;/p&gt;
1273
1274 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1275
1276 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1277 </description>
1278         </item>
1279
1280         <item>
1281                 <title>Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</title>
1282                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</link>
1283                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html</guid>
1284                 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Jun 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
1285                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
1286 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
1287 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
1288 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
1289 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
1290 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
1291 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram package&lt;/a&gt;
1292 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
1293 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
1294 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
1295 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
1296
1297 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1298 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
1299 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
1300 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
1301 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
1302 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
1303 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
1304 firmware-ipw2x00
1305 firmware-ipw2x00
1306 Preconfiguring packages ...
1307 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
1308 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
1309 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
1310 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
1311 #
1312 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1313
1314 &lt;p&gt;When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
1315 printed instead:&lt;/p&gt;
1316
1317 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1318 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
1319 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
1320 #
1321 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1322
1323 &lt;p&gt;It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
1324 me some time when setting up new machines. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1325
1326 &lt;p&gt;So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
1327 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
1328 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
1329 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
1330 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
1331 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
1332 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
1333 &lt;tt&gt;apt-get install&lt;/tt&gt;.  The end result is a slightly better working
1334 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
1335
1336 &lt;p&gt;I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
1337 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
1338 finally fix &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/655507&quot;&gt;BTS report
1339 #655507&lt;/a&gt;.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
1340 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
1341 from the nearby Debian mirror.&lt;/p&gt;
1342 </description>
1343         </item>
1344
1345         <item>
1346                 <title>The value of a good distro wide test suite...</title>
1347                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html</link>
1348                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html</guid>
1349                 <pubDate>Sat, 22 Jun 2013 07:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
1350                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
1351 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; project, we include a post-installation test suite,
1352 which check that services are running, working, and return the
1353 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
1354 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
1355 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
1356 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
1357 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
1358 configured, which is the topic of this post.&lt;/p&gt;
1359
1360 &lt;p&gt;The last week I&#39;ve fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
1361 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
1362 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
1363 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
1364 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
1365 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
1366 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
1367 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
1368 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
1369 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
1370 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
1371 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
1372 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
1373 right after we got the ISOs operational.&lt;/p&gt;
1374
1375 &lt;p&gt;Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
1376 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
1377 test suite using &lt;tt&gt;/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install&lt;/tt&gt; and see if
1378 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
1379 the problem.&lt;/p&gt;
1380
1381 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
1382 please join us on
1383 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu on
1384 irc.debian.org&lt;/a&gt; and the
1385 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;debian-edu@&lt;/a&gt; mailing
1386 list.&lt;/p&gt;
1387 </description>
1388         </item>
1389
1390         <item>
1391                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</title>
1392                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html</link>
1393                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html</guid>
1394                 <pubDate>Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
1395                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and
1396 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; distribution have users and contributors all around the
1397 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
1398 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;our IRC channel
1399 #debian-edu&lt;/a&gt; and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
1400 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
1401 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
1402 with him, to learn more about him.&lt;/p&gt;
1403
1404 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1405
1406 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
1407 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year&#39;s Eve
1408 party, I had a very nice &lt;strike&gt;beer&lt;/strike&gt; discussion with a
1409 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
1410 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
1411 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
1412 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
1413 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
1414 field.&lt;/p&gt;
1415
1416 &lt;p&gt;A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
1417 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
1418 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
1419 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://ceata.org/&quot;&gt;Fundația Ceata&lt;/a&gt;, which is a free
1420 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
1421 the only one we have in our country.&lt;/p&gt;
1422
1423 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1424 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1425
1426 &lt;p&gt;The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
1427 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
1428 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
1429 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
1430 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
1431 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
1432 ways to contribute.&lt;/p&gt;
1433
1434 &lt;p&gt;My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
1435 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
1436 haven&#39;t fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
1437 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
1438 software in my country is pretty low, I&#39;ll be happy to be the first
1439 one around here advocating for the project&#39;s adoption in educational
1440 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
1441 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
1442 from now on, time will tell what I&#39;ll be doing next, but I think I
1443 have a pretty consistent starting point.&lt;/p&gt;
1444
1445 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1446 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1447
1448 &lt;p&gt;Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
1449 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
1450 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
1451 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
1452 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
1453 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
1454 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
1455 it comes to managing a school&#39;s network, for example.&lt;/p&gt;
1456
1457 &lt;p&gt;Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
1458 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
1459 scenarios is something I can&#39;t wait to experiment &quot;into the wild&quot; (I
1460 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
1461 lot more I haven&#39;t discovered yet about it, being so new within the
1462 project.&lt;/p&gt;
1463
1464 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1465 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1466
1467 &lt;p&gt;As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
1468 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
1469 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
1470 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I&#39;d like to see
1471 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
1472 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
1473 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
1474 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project&#39;s dynamics. Not
1475 to mention it&#39;s a very fun blend to work on!&lt;/p&gt;
1476
1477 &lt;p&gt;Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
1478 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
1479 to all blends and derivatives, but it&#39;s an issue we can all work
1480 on.&lt;/p&gt;
1481
1482 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1483
1484 &lt;p&gt;I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
1485 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
1486 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
1487 Enlightenment project a lot!),
1488 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.claws-mail.org/‎&quot;&gt;Claws Mail&lt;/a&gt; due to its ease of
1489 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
1490 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/redshift&quot;&gt;Redshift&lt;/a&gt;, which helps me
1491 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
1492 stuff in this bag, but I&#39;ll need a blog on my own for doing this!&lt;/p&gt;
1493
1494 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1495 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1496
1497 &lt;p&gt;Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
1498 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
1499 that:&lt;/p&gt;
1500
1501 &lt;ul&gt;
1502
1503 &lt;li&gt;schools would like to get rid of proprietary software&lt;/li&gt;
1504
1505 &lt;li&gt;students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
1506     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
1507     of teenagers more?&lt;/li&gt;
1508
1509 &lt;li&gt;there is no &quot;right one&quot; when it comes to strategies, but it would
1510     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
1511     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I&#39;d promote
1512     them!)&lt;/li&gt;
1513
1514 &lt;li&gt;more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
1515     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
1516     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)&lt;/li&gt;
1517
1518 &lt;/ul&gt;
1519
1520 &lt;p&gt;I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
1521 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
1522 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
1523 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
1524 very hard to convert against their will.&lt;/p&gt;
1525 </description>
1526         </item>
1527
1528         <item>
1529                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</title>
1530                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html</link>
1531                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html</guid>
1532                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
1533                 <description>&lt;p&gt;There is a certain cross-over between the
1534 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1535 project&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edubuntu.org/&quot;&gt;the Edubuntu
1536 project&lt;/a&gt;, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
1537 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
1538 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.&lt;/p&gt;
1539
1540 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1541
1542 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
1543 days vary quite a bit since I&#39;m involved in too many things. As I&#39;m
1544 getting older I&#39;m learning how to focus a bit more :)&lt;/p&gt;
1545
1546 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
1547 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
1548 each other.&lt;/p&gt;
1549
1550 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1551 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1552
1553 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
1554 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
1555 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
1556 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
1557 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
1558 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
1559 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
1560 day I have a big todo list backlog that I&#39;m catching up with. I think
1561 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
1562 been gradually improving, although I think there&#39;s a lot that we could
1563 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I&#39;m sure
1564 we&#39;ll get there one day.&lt;/p&gt;
1565
1566 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1567 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1568
1569 &lt;p&gt;Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
1570 it for pages, but in essence I love that it&#39;s a very honest project
1571 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
1572 very high quality work.&lt;/p&gt;
1573
1574 &lt;p&gt;I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
1575 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
1576 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
1577 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it&#39;s easier for
1578 community members and commercial suppliers to support.&lt;/p&gt;
1579
1580 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1581 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1582
1583 &lt;p&gt;I had to re-type this one a few times because I&#39;m trying to
1584 separate &quot;disadvantages&quot; from &quot;areas that need improvement&quot; (which is
1585 what I originally rambled on about)&lt;/p&gt;
1586
1587 &lt;p&gt;The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
1588 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
1589 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
1590 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
1591 on. When you&#39;ve been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
1592 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
1593 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
1594 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I&#39;d love to be one
1595 myself but I&#39;m already so over-committed that it&#39;s just not possible
1596 currently.&lt;/p&gt;
1597
1598 &lt;p&gt;I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
1599 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
1600 their skills in-house. I&#39;m often saddened to see how much money
1601 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don&#39;t
1602 have access to after the service has ended and they could&#39;ve gotten so
1603 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
1604 autonomous.&lt;/p&gt;
1605
1606 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1607
1608 &lt;p&gt;My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
1609 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
1610 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
1611 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
1612 so I suppose I&#39;ll soon be able to regain that disk space :)&lt;/p&gt;
1613
1614 &lt;p&gt;Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
1615 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I&#39;ve been torn on
1616 which desktop environment I like and I&#39;m taking some refuge in Xfce
1617 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
1618 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
1619 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
1620 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
1621 X.&lt;/p&gt;
1622
1623 &lt;p&gt;I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
1624 using Norton Commander in the early 90&#39;s and it stuck (I think the
1625 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don&#39;t know how to use
1626 it :p)
1627
1628 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1629 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1630
1631 &lt;p&gt;I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
1632 many cases it&#39;s appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
1633 don&#39;t think that there&#39;s any particular moral or ethical problem with
1634 that.&lt;/p&gt;
1635
1636 &lt;p&gt;I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
1637 problems in educational institutions and it&#39;s just a shame not taking
1638 advantage of that.&lt;/p&gt;
1639
1640 &lt;p&gt;I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
1641 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
1642 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
1643 general concepts. I think that&#39;s very unproductive because firstly, MS
1644 Office&#39;s interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
1645 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
1646 best solution for them.&lt;/p&gt;
1647
1648 &lt;p&gt;To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
1649 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
1650 make a decision that would work for them.&lt;/p&gt;
1651 </description>
1652         </item>
1653
1654         <item>
1655                 <title>Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</title>
1656                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</link>
1657                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html</guid>
1658                 <pubDate>Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
1659                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
1660 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
1661 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I&#39;ve seen it once in a while the
1662 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I&#39;ve seen it
1663 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
1664 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
1665 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
1666 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
1667 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
1668 i915 driver used by the
1669 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Packard Bell
1670 EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt;, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.&lt;/p&gt;
1671
1672 &lt;p&gt;The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
1673 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
1674 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
1675 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
1676 can be done by running these commands as root:&lt;/p&gt;
1677
1678 &lt;pre&gt;
1679 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
1680 update-initramfs -u -k all
1681 &lt;/pre&gt;
1682
1683 &lt;p&gt;Since March 2012 there is
1684 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955&quot;&gt;a
1685 mechanism in the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; to tell the i915 driver which
1686 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
1687 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
1688 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c&quot;&gt;the
1689 intel_quirks array&lt;/a&gt; in the driver source
1690 &lt;tt&gt;drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c&lt;/tt&gt; (look for &quot;&lt;tt&gt;static
1691 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;), specifying the PCI device
1692 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
1693 number.&lt;/p&gt;
1694
1695 &lt;p&gt;My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from &lt;tt&gt;lspci
1696 -vvnn&lt;/tt&gt; for the video card in question:&lt;/p&gt;
1697
1698 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1699 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
1700     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
1701     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
1702  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
1703  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
1704     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
1705  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast &gt;TAbort- \
1706     &lt;TAbort- &lt;MAbort-&gt;SERR- &lt;PERR- INTx-
1707  Latency: 0
1708  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
1709  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
1710  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
1711  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
1712  Expansion ROM at &lt;unassigned&gt; [disabled]
1713  Capabilities: &lt;access denied&gt;
1714  Kernel driver in use: i915
1715 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1716
1717 &lt;p&gt;The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
1718
1719 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
1720 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
1721        ...
1722         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
1723         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
1724        ...
1725 }
1726 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1727
1728 &lt;p&gt;According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
1729 &lt;tt&gt;modinfo i915&lt;/tt&gt;), information about hardware needing the
1730 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
1731 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel&quot;&gt;dri-devel
1732 (at) lists.freedesktop.org&lt;/a&gt; mailing list to reach the kernel
1733 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
1734 yet shown up in
1735 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html&quot;&gt;the
1736 web archive for the mailing list&lt;/a&gt;, so I suspect they do not accept
1737 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
1738 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
1739 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/710938&quot;&gt;BTS report #710938&lt;/a&gt;, to make
1740 sure the patch is not lost.&lt;/p&gt;
1741
1742 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
1743 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
1744 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
1745 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
1746 the screen during login.  I&#39;ve reported it to Debian as
1747 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/711237&quot;&gt;BTS report #711237&lt;/a&gt;, and
1748 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
1749 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
1750 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
1751 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
1752 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
1753 you do not know how to update BTS).&lt;/p&gt;
1754
1755 &lt;p&gt;Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
1756 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
1757 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
1758 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
1759 backlight.&lt;/p&gt;
1760 </description>
1761         </item>
1762
1763         <item>
1764                 <title>Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
1765                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
1766                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
1767                 <pubDate>Mon, 10 Jun 2013 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
1768                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1769 today.  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
1770
1771 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
1772 2013-06-10&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1773
1774 &lt;p&gt;This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
1775 alpha2, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
1776
1777 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1778
1779 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
1780 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
1781 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
1782 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
1783 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
1784 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
1785 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
1786 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
1787 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
1788 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
1789 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
1790 desktop contains
1791 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html&quot;&gt;more
1792 than 60 educational software packages&lt;/a&gt; and more are available from
1793 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
1794 and Xfce desktop environment.&lt;/p&gt;
1795
1796 &lt;p&gt;This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
1797 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
1798 Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
1799
1800 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1801
1802 &lt;ul&gt;
1803
1804 &lt;li&gt;Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
1805 &lt;li&gt;Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
1806 &lt;li&gt;Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
1807 &lt;li&gt;Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
1808 &lt;li&gt;Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
1809
1810 &lt;/ul&gt;
1811
1812 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1813
1814 &lt;ul&gt;
1815
1816 &lt;li&gt;The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
1817 &lt;li&gt;Updated translation of the installation.
1818 &lt;li&gt;New Romanian translation.
1819 &lt;li&gt;Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
1820 &lt;li&gt;Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
1821 &lt;li&gt;Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
1822 &lt;li&gt;New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
1823 &lt;li&gt;Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
1824 &lt;li&gt;More testsuite tests.
1825 &lt;li&gt;Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
1826 &lt;li&gt;Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
1827
1828 &lt;li&gt;Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
1829 LTSP in Wheezy.&lt;/li&gt;
1830
1831 &lt;li&gt;Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
1832 them up with GOsa².&lt;/li&gt;
1833
1834 &lt;li&gt;Update IMAP server setup. &lt;/li&gt;
1835
1836 &lt;li&gt;Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
1837 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
1838 entered password). &lt;/li&gt;
1839
1840 &lt;/ul&gt;
1841
1842 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1843
1844 &lt;ul&gt;
1845
1846 &lt;li&gt;DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.&lt;/li&gt;
1847
1848 &lt;li&gt;No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
1849 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
1850 missing import feature).&lt;/li&gt;
1851
1852 &lt;li&gt;Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). &lt;/li&gt;
1853
1854 &lt;li&gt;KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
1855 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
1856 unfixed.&lt;/li&gt;
1857
1858 &lt;/ul&gt;
1859
1860 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1861
1862 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
1863
1864 &lt;ul&gt;
1865
1866 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
1867
1868 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
1869
1870 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .&lt;/li&gt;
1871
1872 &lt;/ul&gt;
1873
1874 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
1875 &lt;br&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419&lt;/p&gt;
1876
1877 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1878
1879 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;
1880 </description>
1881         </item>
1882
1883         <item>
1884                 <title>Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</title>
1885                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html</link>
1886                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html</guid>
1887                 <pubDate>Wed, 5 Jun 2013 17:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
1888                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
1889 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
1890 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
1891 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
1892 the project:
1893
1894 &lt;ol&gt;
1895
1896 &lt;li&gt;It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
1897   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
1898   &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/700257&quot;&gt;BTS report #700257&lt;/a&gt;.
1899   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
1900   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?&lt;/li&gt;
1901
1902 &lt;li&gt;It is not possible to &quot;mass import&quot; user lists in Gosa, neither
1903   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
1904   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
1905   This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698840&quot;&gt;BTS report
1906   #698840&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
1907
1908 &lt;/ol&gt;
1909
1910 &lt;p&gt;If you can help us, please join us on IRC
1911 (&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu on
1912 irc.debian.org&lt;/a&gt;) and provide patches via the BTS.&lt;/p&gt;
1913 </description>
1914         </item>
1915
1916         <item>
1917                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</title>
1918                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html</link>
1919                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html</guid>
1920                 <pubDate>Tue, 4 Jun 2013 10:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
1921                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since my last English
1922 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
1923 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
1924 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
1925 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
1926 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.&lt;/p&gt;
1927
1928 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1929
1930 &lt;p&gt;I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
1931 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
1932 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
1933 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.&lt;/p&gt;
1934
1935 &lt;p&gt;I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
1936 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
1937 packaging, publicity and translation.&lt;/p&gt;
1938
1939 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1940 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1941
1942 &lt;p&gt;I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
1943 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals&quot;&gt;the
1944 Debian Edu manual&lt;/a&gt; for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
1945 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
1946 manual.
1947
1948 &lt;p&gt;I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
1949 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
1950 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
1951 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.&lt;/p&gt;
1952
1953 &lt;p&gt;What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
1954 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
1955 by &lt;a href=&quot;https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/&quot;&gt;GOsa²&lt;/a&gt;.  What pleased
1956 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
1957 there were many &quot;traditional&quot; educative software to learn languages,
1958 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
1959 artistic skills with music (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ardour.org/&quot;&gt;Ardour&lt;/a&gt;,
1960 &lt;a href=&quot;http://audacity.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;Audacity&lt;/a&gt;) and
1961 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
1962 &lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;Stopmotion&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
1963
1964 &lt;p&gt;I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
1965 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu&lt;/a&gt;.
1966 Unfortunately, I don&#39;t much time to get more involved in this
1967 beautiful project.&lt;/p&gt;
1968
1969 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1970 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1971
1972 &lt;p&gt;For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
1973 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
1974 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.&lt;/p&gt;
1975
1976 &lt;p&gt;I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
1977 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
1978 of educational free software.&lt;/p&gt;
1979
1980 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1981 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1982
1983 &lt;p&gt;Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
1984 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
1985 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
1986 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
1987 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.&lt;/p&gt;
1988
1989 &lt;p&gt;One can find support from a company by looking at
1990 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp&quot;&gt;the
1991 wiki dokumentation&lt;/a&gt;, where some countries already have a number of
1992 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
1993 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
1994 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
1995 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
1996 support for Debian Edu as well.&lt;/p&gt;
1997
1998 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1999
2000 &lt;p&gt;I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
2001 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
2002 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
2003 also using the mathematical software
2004 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎&quot;&gt;Scilab&lt;/a&gt; and
2005 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎&quot;&gt;Sage&lt;/a&gt; (built from
2006 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
2007
2008 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
2009 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
2010 statistics?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2011
2012 &lt;p&gt;I do not have any &quot;nice&quot; recommendations for statistics. At our
2013 university, we use both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.r-project.org/‎&quot;&gt;R&lt;/a&gt; and
2014 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
2015 geometry, there are nice programs:&lt;/p&gt;
2016
2017 &lt;ul&gt;
2018
2019 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drgeo.eu/&quot;&gt;drgeo&lt;/a&gt; and
2020 &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎&quot;&gt;kig&lt;/a&gt; to do
2021 constructions in planar geometry
2022
2023 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html&quot;&gt;kali&lt;/a&gt;
2024 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
2025 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.&lt;/li&gt;
2026
2027 &lt;/ul&gt;
2028
2029 &lt;p&gt;I like also
2030 &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor&quot;&gt;cantor&lt;/a&gt;, which
2031 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
2032 &lt;a href=&quot;http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎&quot;&gt;Octave&lt;/a&gt;, etc...&lt;/p&gt;
2033
2034 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2035 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2036
2037 &lt;p&gt;My suggestions would be to&lt;/p&gt;
2038
2039 &lt;ul&gt;
2040
2041 &lt;li&gt;advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.&lt;/li&gt;
2042
2043 &lt;li&gt;communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
2044     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
2045     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.&lt;/li&gt;
2046
2047 &lt;li&gt;advertise the living and strong community around the project.&lt;/li&gt;
2048
2049 &lt;li&gt;show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
2050     system.&lt;/li&gt;
2051
2052 &lt;/ul&gt;
2053 </description>
2054         </item>
2055
2056         <item>
2057                 <title>Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</title>
2058                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</link>
2059                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</guid>
2060                 <pubDate>Sat, 1 Jun 2013 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2061                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Included in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
2062 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, there are quite a lot of educational software.
2063 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
2064 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
2065 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
2066 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
2067 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
2068 program.&lt;/p&gt;
2069
2070 &lt;!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk &#39;{print $2}&#39;); do   echo; echo &quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;$f&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&quot;; echo &quot;&lt;p&gt;&quot;;   (     for p in $(debtags search --names &quot;use::learning &amp;&amp; interface::x11 &amp;&amp; role::program &amp;&amp; $f&quot;); do img=&quot;&lt;img src=&#39;http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p&#39; alt=&#39;$p&#39;&gt;&quot;; if dpkg -s $p &gt; /dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1; then           echo &quot;&lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p&#39;&gt;$img&lt;/a&gt;&quot;; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&quot;; done --&gt;
2071
2072 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::arts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2073 &lt;p&gt;
2074 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=audacity&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png&#39; alt=&#39;audacity&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2075 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png&#39; alt=&#39;childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2076 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=denemo&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png&#39; alt=&#39;denemo&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2077 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=freebirth&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png&#39; alt=&#39;freebirth&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2078 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2079 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gimp&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png&#39; alt=&#39;gimp&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2080 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=hydrogen&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png&#39; alt=&#39;hydrogen&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2081 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=lilypond&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png&#39; alt=&#39;lilypond&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2082 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=lmms&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png&#39; alt=&#39;lmms&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2083 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=rosegarden&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png&#39; alt=&#39;rosegarden&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2084 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=scribus&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png&#39; alt=&#39;scribus&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2085 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=solfege&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png&#39; alt=&#39;solfege&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2086 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=stopmotion&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png&#39; alt=&#39;stopmotion&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2087 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=tuxpaint&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png&#39; alt=&#39;tuxpaint&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2088 &lt;/p&gt;
2089
2090 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::astronomy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2091 &lt;p&gt;
2092 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=celestia-gnome&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png&#39; alt=&#39;celestia-gnome&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2093 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gpredict&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png&#39; alt=&#39;gpredict&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2094 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kstars&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png&#39; alt=&#39;kstars&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2095 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=planets&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png&#39; alt=&#39;planets&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2096 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=stellarium&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png&#39; alt=&#39;stellarium&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2097 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=xplanet&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png&#39; alt=&#39;xplanet&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2098 &lt;/p&gt;
2099
2100 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::biology:structural&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2101 &lt;p&gt;
2102 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=pymol&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png&#39; alt=&#39;pymol&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2103 &lt;/p&gt;
2104
2105 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::chemistry&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2106 &lt;p&gt;
2107 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=atomix&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png&#39; alt=&#39;atomix&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2108 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=chemtool&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png&#39; alt=&#39;chemtool&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2109 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=easychem&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png&#39; alt=&#39;easychem&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2110 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gchempaint&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png&#39; alt=&#39;gchempaint&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2111 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gdis&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png&#39; alt=&#39;gdis&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2112 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=ghemical&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png&#39; alt=&#39;ghemical&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2113 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gperiodic&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png&#39; alt=&#39;gperiodic&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2114 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kalzium&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png&#39; alt=&#39;kalzium&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2115 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=pymol&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png&#39; alt=&#39;pymol&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2116 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=viewmol&#39;&gt;[viewmol]&lt;/a&gt;
2117 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=xdrawchem&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png&#39; alt=&#39;xdrawchem&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2118 &lt;/p&gt;
2119
2120 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::electronics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2121 &lt;p&gt;
2122 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2123 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gpsim&#39;&gt;[gpsim]&lt;/a&gt;
2124 &lt;/p&gt;
2125
2126 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::geography&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2127 &lt;p&gt;
2128 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kgeography&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png&#39; alt=&#39;kgeography&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2129 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=marble&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png&#39; alt=&#39;marble&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2130 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=xplanet&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png&#39; alt=&#39;xplanet&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2131 &lt;/p&gt;
2132
2133 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::linguistics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2134 &lt;p&gt;
2135 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2136 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kanagram&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png&#39; alt=&#39;kanagram&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2137 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=khangman&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png&#39; alt=&#39;khangman&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2138 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=klettres&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png&#39; alt=&#39;klettres&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2139 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=parley&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png&#39; alt=&#39;parley&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2140 &lt;/p&gt;
2141
2142 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::mathematics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2143 &lt;p&gt;
2144 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png&#39; alt=&#39;childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2145 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=drgeo&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png&#39; alt=&#39;drgeo&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2146 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2147 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=geogebra&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png&#39; alt=&#39;geogebra&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2148 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=geomview&#39;&gt;[geomview]&lt;/a&gt;
2149 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=grace&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png&#39; alt=&#39;grace&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2150 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=graphmonkey&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png&#39; alt=&#39;graphmonkey&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2151 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=graphthing&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png&#39; alt=&#39;graphthing&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2152 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kalgebra&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png&#39; alt=&#39;kalgebra&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2153 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kbruch&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png&#39; alt=&#39;kbruch&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2154 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kig&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png&#39; alt=&#39;kig&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2155 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=kmplot&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png&#39; alt=&#39;kmplot&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2156 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=mathwar&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png&#39; alt=&#39;mathwar&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2157 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=rocs&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png&#39; alt=&#39;rocs&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2158 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=scratch&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png&#39; alt=&#39;scratch&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2159 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=tuxmath&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png&#39; alt=&#39;tuxmath&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2160 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=xabacus&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png&#39; alt=&#39;xabacus&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2161 &lt;/p&gt;
2162
2163 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::physics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2164 &lt;p&gt;
2165 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2166 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=step&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png&#39; alt=&#39;step&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2167 &lt;/p&gt;
2168
2169 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;field::TODO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2170 &lt;p&gt;
2171 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=blinken&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png&#39; alt=&#39;blinken&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2172 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=cgoban&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png&#39; alt=&#39;cgoban&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2173 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png&#39; alt=&#39;childsplay&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2174 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png&#39; alt=&#39;gcompris&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2175 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gnuchess&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png&#39; alt=&#39;gnuchess&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2176 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gnugo&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png&#39; alt=&#39;gnugo&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2177 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=gtans&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png&#39; alt=&#39;gtans&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2178 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=ktouch&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png&#39; alt=&#39;ktouch&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2179 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=librecad&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png&#39; alt=&#39;librecad&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2180 &lt;a href=&#39;http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&amp;exact=1&amp;suite=all&amp;section=all&amp;keywords=scratch&#39;&gt;&lt;img src=&#39;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png&#39; alt=&#39;scratch&#39;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
2181 &lt;/p&gt;
2182
2183 &lt;p&gt;In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
2184 &lt;a href=&quot;http://screenshot.debian.net&quot;&gt;screenshot.debian.net&lt;/a&gt;.  If
2185 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
2186 know on &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;IRC, #debian-edu
2187 on irc.debian.org&lt;/a&gt;, or our
2188 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;mailing list
2189 debian-edu@&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
2190 </description>
2191         </item>
2192
2193         <item>
2194                 <title>How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</title>
2195                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html</link>
2196                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html</guid>
2197                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 May 2013 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
2198                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Two days ago, I asked
2199 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html&quot;&gt;how
2200 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
2201 preinstalled with Windows 8&lt;/a&gt;.  I found a solution, but am horrified
2202 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
2203 and Windows 8.&lt;/p&gt;
2204
2205 &lt;p&gt;I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
2206 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
2207 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
2208 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
2209 enough to tell.&lt;/p&gt;
2210
2211 &lt;p&gt;There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
2212 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
2213 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
2214 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
2215 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
2216 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
2217 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
2218 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
2219 to follow.&lt;/p&gt;
2220
2221 &lt;p&gt;I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
2222 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
2223 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
2224 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
2225 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
2226 it close to impossible for &quot;normal&quot; users to install Linux without
2227 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
2228 without risking to loose the warranty?&lt;/p&gt;
2229
2230 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve updated the
2231 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Linux Laptop
2232 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt;, to ensure the next person
2233 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
2234 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
2235
2236 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
2237 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.&lt;/p&gt;
2238 </description>
2239         </item>
2240
2241         <item>
2242                 <title>How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</title>
2243                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html</link>
2244                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html</guid>
2245                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 May 2013 18:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
2246                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
2247 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
2248 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
2249 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
2250 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
2251 instead of a BIOS to boot.&lt;/p&gt;
2252
2253 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
2254 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
2255 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
2256 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
2257 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
2258 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
2259 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
2260 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
2261 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
2262 to get it to boot the Linux installer.&lt;/p&gt;
2263
2264 &lt;p&gt;I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
2265 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv&quot;&gt;Packard Bell
2266 EasyNote LV&lt;/a&gt; model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
2267 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
2268 page.  If I can&#39;t find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
2269 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.&lt;/p&gt;
2270
2271 &lt;p&gt;I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
2272 using UEFI and &quot;secure boot&quot; by making it impossible to install Linux
2273 on new Laptops?&lt;/p&gt;
2274 </description>
2275         </item>
2276
2277         <item>
2278                 <title>How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</title>
2279                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</link>
2280                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html</guid>
2281                 <pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2282                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is
2283 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
2284 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
2285 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
2286 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
2287 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
2288 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
2289 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
2290 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;please
2291 donate some money&lt;/a&gt;.
2292
2293 &lt;p&gt;A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
2294 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
2295 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn&#39;t very
2296 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
2297 the Debian Edu installer.&lt;/p&gt;
2298
2299 &lt;p&gt;The script,
2300 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup&quot;&gt;debian-edu-bless&lt;a/&gt;
2301 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
2302 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
2303 into a Debian Edu Workstation:&lt;/p&gt;
2304
2305 &lt;ol&gt;
2306
2307 &lt;li&gt;Add skolelinux related APT sources.&lt;/li&gt;
2308 &lt;li&gt;Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.&lt;/li&gt;
2309 &lt;li&gt;Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
2310     our configuration.&lt;/li&gt;
2311 &lt;li&gt;Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
2312     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
2313     according to the profile specified in the config above,
2314     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.&lt;/li&gt;
2315 &lt;li&gt;Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
2316     that could not be done using preseeding.&lt;/li&gt;
2317 &lt;li&gt;Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.&lt;/li&gt;
2318
2319 &lt;/ol&gt;
2320
2321 &lt;p&gt;There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
2322 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
2323 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
2324 the needed packages.&lt;/p&gt;
2325
2326 &lt;p&gt;The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
2327 setting up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspberrypi.org&quot;&gt;Raspberry Pi&lt;/a&gt; as a
2328 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
2329 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎&quot;&gt;Raspbian&lt;/a&gt; installation and
2330 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
2331 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).&lt;/p&gt;
2332
2333 &lt;p&gt;The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
2334 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
2335 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:&lt;/p&gt;
2336
2337 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2338 PROFILE=&quot;Roaming-Workstation&quot;
2339 DESKTOP=&quot;lxde&quot;
2340 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2341
2342 &lt;p&gt;The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
2343 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
2344 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
2345 boot.&lt;/p&gt;
2346 </description>
2347         </item>
2348
2349         <item>
2350                 <title>Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
2351                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
2352                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
2353                 <pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2354                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2355 project&lt;/a&gt; is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
2356 release today.  This is the release announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
2357
2358 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
2359 2013-05-14&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2360
2361 &lt;p&gt;This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
2362 alpha1, based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; with
2363 codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
2364
2365 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2366
2367 &lt;p&gt;Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
2368 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2369 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
2370 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2371 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2372 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2373 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
2374 other machines can be installed via the network.&lt;/p&gt;
2375
2376 &lt;p&gt;This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
2377 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
2378 version compared to the Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
2379
2380 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2381 &lt;ul&gt;
2382   &lt;li&gt;Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
2383     default.&lt;/li&gt;
2384   &lt;li&gt;Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.&lt;/li&gt;
2385   &lt;li&gt;Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.&lt;/li&gt;
2386   &lt;li&gt;Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
2387     ibus-anthy.&lt;/li&gt;
2388 &lt;/ul&gt;
2389
2390 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2391 &lt;ul&gt;
2392
2393   &lt;li&gt;Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
2394     reliability improvements.&lt;/li&gt;
2395   &lt;li&gt;Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
2396     of &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/706434&quot;&gt;706434&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
2397   &lt;li&gt;Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
2398     problems.&lt;/li&gt;
2399   &lt;li&gt;Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
2400     direct:// URL.&lt;/li&gt;
2401   &lt;li&gt;Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.&lt;/li&gt;
2402   &lt;li&gt;Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.&lt;/li&gt;
2403   &lt;li&gt;Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.&lt;/li&gt;
2404   &lt;li&gt;Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
2405     servers, to make room for all the software installed.&lt;/li&gt;
2406   &lt;li&gt;Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
2407     log in (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/706753&quot;&gt;706753&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
2408 &lt;/ul&gt;
2409
2410 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Known issues&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2411 &lt;ul&gt;
2412
2413   &lt;li&gt;IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
2414     (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/705900&quot;&gt;705900&lt;/a&gt;).  Only install
2415     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.&lt;/li&gt;
2416   &lt;li&gt;DVD images are not yet ready.&lt;/li&gt;
2417   &lt;li&gt;No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
2418     available yet (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698840&quot;&gt;698840&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
2419   &lt;li&gt;Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).&lt;/li&gt;
2420   &lt;li&gt;KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.&lt;/li&gt;
2421   &lt;li&gt;LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
2422     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.&lt;/li&gt;
2423   &lt;li&gt;Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
2424     password submission problem
2425     (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/700257&quot;&gt;700257&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
2426
2427 &lt;/ul&gt;
2428
2429 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2430
2431 &lt;p&gt;To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
2432 &lt;ul&gt;
2433
2434   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2435   &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2436   &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
2437
2438 &lt;/ul&gt;
2439
2440 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b&lt;/p&gt;
2441
2442 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c&lt;/p&gt;
2443
2444 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2445
2446 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2447 </description>
2448         </item>
2449
2450         <item>
2451                 <title>Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</title>
2452                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</link>
2453                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html</guid>
2454                 <pubDate>Sat, 11 May 2013 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2455                 <description>&lt;P&gt;In January,
2456 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html&quot;&gt;I
2457 announced a&lt;/a&gt; new &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;IRC
2458 channel #debian-lego&lt;/a&gt;, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
2459 community interested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lego.com/&quot;&gt;LEGO&lt;/a&gt;, the
2460 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
2461 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;a wiki page&lt;/a&gt; to have
2462 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
2463 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
2464 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
2465 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego&quot;&gt;hardware::hobby:lego&lt;/a&gt;
2466 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
2467 LEGO and &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/&quot;&gt;Mindstorms&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
2468
2469 &lt;p&gt;&lt;table&gt;
2470 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos&quot;&gt;brickos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2471 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad&quot;&gt;leocad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;virtual brick CAD software&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2472 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt&quot;&gt;libnxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2473 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd&quot;&gt;lnpd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2474 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc&quot;&gt;nbc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2475 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc&quot;&gt;nqc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2476 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt&quot;&gt;python-nxt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2477 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer&quot;&gt;python-nxt-filer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2478 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch&quot;&gt;scratch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2479 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n&quot;&gt;t2n&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;simple command-line tool for Lego NXT&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2480 &lt;/table&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2481
2482 &lt;p&gt;Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
2483 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
2484 available in experimental.&lt;/p&gt;
2485
2486 &lt;p&gt;If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
2487 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
2488 for LEGO designers.&lt;/p&gt;
2489 </description>
2490         </item>
2491
2492         <item>
2493                 <title>Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</title>
2494                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</link>
2495                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html</guid>
2496                 <pubDate>Sun, 5 May 2013 07:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
2497                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
2498 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504&quot;&gt;release announcement
2499 for Debian Wheezy&lt;/a&gt; was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
2500 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
2501 soon.&lt;/p&gt;
2502
2503 &lt;p&gt;The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
2504 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
2505 &lt;a href=&quot;http://scratch.mit.edu/&quot;&gt;Scratch&lt;/a&gt; program, made famous by
2506 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.code.org/&quot;&gt;Teach kids code&lt;/a&gt; movement, is
2507 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
2508 &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/&quot;&gt;kturtle&lt;/a&gt; and
2509 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art&quot;&gt;turtleart&lt;/a&gt;,
2510 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
2511 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
2512 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
2513 Edu.&lt;/a&gt;
2514
2515 &lt;p&gt;And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
2516 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
2517 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html&quot;&gt;first
2518 alpha release&lt;/a&gt; went out last week, and the next should soon
2519 follow.&lt;p&gt;
2520 </description>
2521         </item>
2522
2523         <item>
2524                 <title>First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</title>
2525                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</link>
2526                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html</guid>
2527                 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Apr 2013 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2528                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
2529 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
2530 announcement:&lt;/p&gt;
2531
2532 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
2533 2013-04-26&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2534
2535 &lt;p&gt;This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
2536 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename &quot;Wheezy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
2537
2538 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2539
2540 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu, also known as
2541 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2542 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2543 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
2544 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2545 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2546 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2547 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2548 installed via the network.&lt;/p&gt;
2549
2550 &lt;p&gt;This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
2551 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
2552 version compared to the Squeeze release.&lt;/p&gt;
2553
2554 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Software updates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2555
2556 &lt;ul&gt;
2557 &lt;li&gt;Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
2558   &lt;ul&gt;
2559      &lt;li&gt;Linux kernel 3.2.x&lt;/li&gt;
2560      &lt;li&gt;Desktop environments KDE &quot;Plasma&quot; 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
2561          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
2562          manual.)&lt;/li&gt;
2563      &lt;li&gt;Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR&lt;/li&gt;
2564      &lt;li&gt;LibreOffice 3.5.4&lt;/li&gt;
2565      &lt;li&gt;LTSP 5.4.2&lt;/li&gt;
2566      &lt;li&gt;GOsa 2.7.4&lt;/li&gt;
2567      &lt;li&gt;CUPS print system 1.5.3&lt;/li&gt;
2568      &lt;li&gt;Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01&lt;/li&gt;
2569      &lt;li&gt;Music creator Rosegarden 12.04&lt;/li&gt;
2570      &lt;li&gt;Image editor Gimp 2.8.2&lt;/li&gt;
2571      &lt;li&gt;Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1&lt;/li&gt;
2572      &lt;li&gt;Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3&lt;/li&gt;
2573      &lt;li&gt;Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6&lt;/li&gt;
2574      &lt;li&gt;New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
2575          &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual&quot;&gt;installation
2576          manual&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/li&gt;
2577      &lt;li&gt;Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
2578          installation.&lt;/li&gt;
2579      &lt;li&gt;More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
2580          &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes&quot;&gt;release notes&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual&quot;&gt;installation manual&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
2581   &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2582 &lt;/ul&gt;
2583
2584 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Documentation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2585 &lt;ul&gt;
2586 &lt;li&gt;The (&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy&quot;&gt;English&lt;/a&gt;) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
2587     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
2588     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.&lt;/li&gt;
2589 &lt;/ul&gt;
2590
2591 &lt;p&gt;&lt;Strong&gt;LDAP related changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2592 &lt;ul&gt;
2593 &lt;li&gt;Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
2594     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
2595     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.&lt;/li&gt;
2596 &lt;/ul&gt;
2597
2598 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other changes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2599 &lt;ul&gt;
2600 &lt;li&gt;LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
2601     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
2602     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.&lt;li&gt;
2603 &lt;li&gt;GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
2604     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
2605     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.&lt;/li&gt;
2606 &lt;/ul&gt;
2607
2608 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regressions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2609 &lt;ul&gt;
2610 &lt;li&gt;No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
2611     yet.&lt;/li&gt;
2612 &lt;/ul&gt;
2613
2614 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No updated artwork&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2615
2616 &lt;ul&gt;
2617 &lt;li&gt;Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
2618     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
2619     had for our Squeeze based release.&lt;/li&gt;
2620 &lt;/ul&gt;
2621
2622 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where to get it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2623
2624 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
2625 &lt;ul&gt;
2626 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2627 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2628 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/&lt;/li&gt;
2629 &lt;/ul&gt;
2630
2631 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c&lt;/p&gt;
2632
2633 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2&lt;/p&gt;
2634
2635 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to report bugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2636
2637 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2638 </description>
2639         </item>
2640
2641         <item>
2642                 <title>First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</title>
2643                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html</link>
2644                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html</guid>
2645                 <pubDate>Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
2646                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This years first &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux /
2647 Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
2648 Details about the gathering can be found
2649 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim&quot;&gt;on
2650 the FRiSK wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
2651 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
2652 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
2653 weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
2654
2655 &lt;p&gt;The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
2656 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
2657 Edu release.&lt;/p&gt;
2658
2659 &lt;p&gt;See you on &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu&quot;&gt;IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,&lt;/a&gt; then?&lt;/p&gt;
2660 </description>
2661         </item>
2662
2663         <item>
2664                 <title>Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</title>
2665                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</link>
2666                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html</guid>
2667                 <pubDate>Wed, 3 Apr 2013 23:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
2668                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today the &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram&quot;&gt;Isenkram
2669 package&lt;/a&gt; finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
2670 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
2671 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.&lt;/p&gt;
2672
2673 &lt;p&gt;Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
2674 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
2675 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
2676 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
2677 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
2678 BTS. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2679 </description>
2680         </item>
2681
2682         <item>
2683                 <title>Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</title>
2684                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html</link>
2685                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html</guid>
2686                 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
2687                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
2688 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
2689 font you use when printing.&lt;/p&gt;
2690
2691 &lt;p&gt;Three years ago,
2692 &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/&quot;&gt;Ars
2693 Technica&lt;/a&gt; reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
2694 changed their default front from
2695 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial&quot;&gt;Arial&lt;/a&gt; to
2696 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic&quot;&gt;Century
2697 Gothic&lt;/a&gt; to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
2698 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
2699 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
2700 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
2701 prints.&lt;/p&gt;
2702
2703 &lt;p&gt;But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
2704 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
2705 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
2706 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097&quot;&gt;a report from
2707 TwinCities.com&lt;/a&gt;, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
2708 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
2709 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
2710 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
2711 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
2712 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
2713 depend on the documents printed.&lt;/p&gt;
2714
2715 &lt;p&gt;But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
2716 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
2717 and save some money in the process.&lt;/p&gt;
2718
2719 &lt;p&gt;Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
2720 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
2721 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font&quot;&gt;service to calculate the
2722 difference between font pairs&lt;/a&gt;.  They also
2723 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---&quot;&gt;recommend
2724 which fonts to use&lt;/a&gt; to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
2725 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
2726 &lt;a href=&quot;http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/&quot;&gt;listing
2727 the fonts they recommend&lt;/a&gt;, with Centory Gothic at the top.&lt;/p&gt;
2728 </description>
2729         </item>
2730
2731         <item>
2732                 <title>Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</title>
2733                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html</link>
2734                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html</guid>
2735                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
2736                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, during a discussion in
2737 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efn.no/&quot;&gt;EFN&lt;/a&gt; about interesting books to read
2738 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
2739 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
2740 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/&quot;&gt;Tore Åge Bringsværd&lt;/a&gt;
2741 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
2742 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
2743 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
2744 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
2745 short story using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.creativecommons.org/&quot;&gt;Creative
2746 Commons&lt;/a&gt; license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
2747 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.&lt;/p&gt;
2748
2749 &lt;p&gt;As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
2750 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
2751 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
2752 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;DocBook&lt;/a&gt; processing framework to
2753 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
2754 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
2755 distribution of choice, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt;, so
2756 all I had to do was to use the
2757 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;dblatex&lt;/a&gt;,
2758 &lt;a href=&quot;http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README&quot;&gt;dbtoepub&lt;/a&gt;
2759 and &lt;a href=&quot;https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/&quot;&gt;xmlto&lt;/a&gt; tools to do the
2760 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
2761 xsltproc/fop (aka
2762 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets&quot;&gt;docbook-xsl&lt;/a&gt;),
2763 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
2764 nicer &amp;lt;variablelist&amp;gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
2765 technical detail.&lt;/p&gt;
2766
2767 &lt;p&gt;There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
2768 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
2769 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
2770 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
2771 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
2772 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;
2773
2774 &lt;p&gt;I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
2775 single star in it, ie &amp;lt;para&amp;gt;*&amp;lt;/para&amp;gt;, but it made sure a
2776 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
2777 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
2778 preprocessor directive &amp;lt;?newscene?&amp;gt;, mapping to &quot;&amp;lt;hr/&amp;gt;&quot;
2779 for HTML and &quot;&amp;lt;fo:block text-align=&quot;center&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;fo:leader
2780 leader-pattern=&quot;rule&quot; rule-thickness=&quot;0.5pt&quot;/&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/fo:block&amp;gt;&quot;
2781 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
2782 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;
2783
2784 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2785 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
2786 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;&amp;gt;
2787   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;newscene&#39;)&quot;&amp;gt;
2788     &amp;lt;hr/&amp;gt;
2789   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
2790 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
2791 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2792
2793 &lt;p&gt;And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;
2794
2795 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2796 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
2797 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;&amp;gt;
2798   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;newscene&#39;)&quot;&amp;gt;
2799     &amp;lt;fo:block text-align=&quot;center&quot;&amp;gt;
2800       &amp;lt;fo:leader leader-pattern=&quot;rule&quot; rule-thickness=&quot;0.5pt&quot;/&amp;gt;
2801     &amp;lt;/fo:block&amp;gt;
2802   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
2803 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
2804 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2805
2806 &lt;p&gt;Finally, I came across the &amp;lt;bridgehead&amp;gt; tag, which seem to be
2807 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &amp;lt;?newscene?&amp;gt;
2808 with &amp;lt;bridgehead&amp;gt;*&amp;lt;/bridgehead&amp;gt;.  It isn&#39;t centred, but we
2809 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn&#39;t
2810 enough.&lt;/p&gt;
2811
2812 &lt;p&gt;I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
2813 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
2814 directive &amp;lt;?linebreak?&amp;gt;, mapping to &amp;lt;br/&amp;gt; in HTML, and
2815 &amp;lt;fo:block/&amp;gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
2816 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
2817 look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
2818
2819 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2820 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
2821 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;&amp;gt;
2822   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;linebreak)&quot;&amp;gt;
2823     &amp;lt;br/&amp;gt;
2824   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
2825 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
2826 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2827
2828 &lt;p&gt;And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;
2829
2830 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2831 &amp;lt;?xml version=&#39;1.0&#39;?&amp;gt;
2832 &amp;lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform&quot; version=&#39;1.0&#39;
2833   xmlns:fo=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format&quot;&amp;gt;
2834   &amp;lt;xsl:template match=&quot;processing-instruction(&#39;linebreak)&quot;&amp;gt;
2835     &amp;lt;fo:block/&amp;gt;
2836   &amp;lt;/xsl:template&amp;gt;
2837 &amp;lt;/xsl:stylesheet&amp;gt;
2838 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2839
2840 &lt;p&gt;One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
2841 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
2842 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
2843 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
2844 page.&lt;/p&gt;
2845
2846 &lt;p&gt;If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
2847 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/sickel/kodemus&quot;&gt;source repository at
2848 github&lt;/a&gt;
2849 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/EFN/kodemus&quot;&gt;future/new/official
2850 repository&lt;/a&gt;).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
2851 days.&lt;/p&gt;
2852 </description>
2853         </item>
2854
2855         <item>
2856                 <title>Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</title>
2857                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html</link>
2858                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html</guid>
2859                 <pubDate>Sun, 17 Mar 2013 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
2860                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Via
2861 &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930&quot;&gt;twitter&lt;/a&gt;
2862 I just discovered that &lt;a href=&quot;http://pcwizz.net/&quot;&gt;Pcwizz&lt;/a&gt; have
2863 done a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc&quot;&gt;video
2864 review&lt;/a&gt; on Youtube of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
2865 / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
2866 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
2867 a few programs and his view of our distribution.&lt;/p&gt;
2868
2869 &lt;p&gt;There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
2870 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:&lt;/p&gt;
2871
2872 &lt;blockquote&gt;
2873 &quot;Basically everything you ever need in a school environment.&quot;
2874 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
2875
2876 &lt;p&gt;And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:&lt;/p&gt;
2877
2878 &lt;blockquote&gt;
2879 &quot;So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
2880 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
2881 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
2882 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
2883 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network.&quot;
2884 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
2885
2886 &lt;p&gt;To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
2887 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
2888 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
2889 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2890
2891 &lt;p&gt;While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
2892 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
2893
2894 &lt;blockquote&gt;
2895 &quot;[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
2896 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
2897 actually don&#39;t need in the education distribution, but have just been
2898 included because it isn&#39;t stripped out for some reason.&quot;
2899 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
2900
2901 &lt;p&gt;I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
2902 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
2903 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries&quot;&gt;one
2904 consistent menu system&lt;/a&gt; instead of two incomplete and partly
2905 inconsistent menu systems.&lt;/p&gt;
2906
2907 &lt;p&gt;The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
2908 embedding:&lt;/p&gt;
2909
2910 &lt;iframe width=&quot;560&quot; height=&quot;315&quot; src=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;
2911 </description>
2912         </item>
2913
2914         <item>
2915                 <title>First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</title>
2916                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html</link>
2917                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html</guid>
2918                 <pubDate>Fri, 8 Mar 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
2919                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
2920 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;
2921 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
2922 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;the
2923 initial release 2012-03-11&lt;/a&gt;.  This is the
2924 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;release
2925 announcement email from Holger&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
2926
2927 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hi,&lt;/p&gt;
2928
2929 &lt;p&gt;it&#39;s my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
2930 Edu 6.0.7+r1 (&quot;Debian Edu Squeeze&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;
2931
2932 &lt;p&gt;Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
2933 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
2934 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
2935 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
2936 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311&quot;&gt;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311&lt;/a&gt;
2937 for more information on &quot;Debian Edu Squeeze&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
2938
2939 &lt;p&gt;Images are available for download at
2940 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2941
2942 &lt;p&gt;md5sums:
2943 &lt;br&gt;1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
2944 &lt;br&gt;a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
2945 &lt;br&gt;ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso&lt;/p&gt;
2946
2947 &lt;p&gt;sha1sums:
2948 &lt;br&gt;a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
2949 &lt;br&gt;9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
2950 &lt;br&gt;43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso&lt;/p&gt;
2951
2952 &lt;p&gt;These images are suitable for amd64+i386.&lt;/p&gt;
2953
2954 &lt;p&gt;Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename &quot;Squeeze&quot;, released
2955 2013-03-03:&lt;/p&gt;
2956
2957 &lt;ul&gt;
2958   &lt;li&gt;sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
2959   &lt;ul&gt;
2960         &lt;li&gt;Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient&lt;/li&gt;
2961         &lt;li&gt;Comply with 3.X kernel&lt;/li&gt;
2962   &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2963   &lt;li&gt;debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
2964   &lt;ul&gt;
2965         &lt;li&gt;Minor updates from the wiki&lt;/li&gt;
2966         &lt;li&gt;Danish translation now complete&lt;/li&gt;
2967   &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2968   &lt;li&gt;debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
2969      &lt;ul&gt;
2970         &lt;li&gt;Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880&lt;/li&gt;
2971         &lt;li&gt;Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.&lt;/li&gt;
2972         &lt;li&gt;Correct Kerberos user policy: don&#39;t expire password after 2 days.
2973                 Closes: #664596&lt;/li&gt;
2974         &lt;li&gt;Handle &#39;#&#39; characters in the root or first users password.
2975                 Closes: #664976&lt;/li&gt;
2976         &lt;li&gt;Fixes for gosa-sync:
2977            &lt;ul&gt;
2978                 &lt;li&gt;Don&#39;t fail if password contains &quot;&lt;/li&gt;
2979                 &lt;li&gt;Don&#39;t disclose new password string in syslog&lt;/li&gt;
2980            &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2981         &lt;li&gt;Fixes for gosa-create:
2982            &lt;ul&gt;
2983                 &lt;li&gt;Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes&lt;/li&gt;
2984                 &lt;li&gt;Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²&lt;/li&gt;
2985                 &lt;li&gt;gosa-netgroups plugin: don&#39;t erase entries of attribute type
2986                          &quot;memberNisNetgroup&quot;. Closes: #687256&lt;/li&gt;
2987                 &lt;li&gt;First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users&lt;/li&gt;
2988            &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2989         &lt;li&gt;Add Danish web page&lt;/li&gt;
2990     &lt;/ul&gt;
2991   &lt;li&gt;debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
2992     &lt;ul&gt;
2993         &lt;li&gt;Improve preseeding support and documentation&lt;/li&gt;
2994     &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
2995 &lt;/ul&gt;
2996
2997 &lt;p&gt;End-user documentation in English is available at
2998 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/&quot;&gt;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/&lt;/a&gt;
2999 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
3000 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)&lt;/p&gt;
3001
3002 &lt;p&gt;If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
3003 mailinglist
3004 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;debian-edu@lists.debian.org&lt;/a&gt;!
3005 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
3006
3007 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3008 </description>
3009         </item>
3010
3011         <item>
3012                 <title>Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</title>
3013                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html</link>
3014                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html</guid>
3015                 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Mar 2013 07:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
3016                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
3017 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
3018 support using
3019 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and
3020 open standards&lt;/a&gt;?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
3021 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
3022 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
3023 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frikanalen.no/&quot;&gt;Frikanalen&lt;/a&gt; have been building a
3024 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
3025 using the GNU LGPL, and
3026 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/Frikanalen&quot;&gt;available from github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3027
3028 &lt;p&gt;The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
3029 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
3030 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
3031 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
3032 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
3033 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.&lt;/p&gt;
3034
3035 &lt;p&gt;There are several parts to this web based solution.  I&#39;ll mention
3036 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
3037 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
3038 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
3039 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
3040 &lt;a href=&quot;http://beta.frikanalen.tv/&quot;&gt;beta.frikanalen.tv&lt;/a&gt;.  The
3041 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
3042 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
3043 using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.casparcg.com/&quot;&gt;CasparCG from SVT&lt;/a&gt; and
3044 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mltframework.org/&quot;&gt;Media Lovin&#39; Toolkit&lt;/a&gt;.  Video
3045 signal distribution is handled using
3046 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ob-encoder.com/&quot;&gt;Open Broadcast Encoder&lt;/a&gt;.  The
3047 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
3048 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
3049 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
3050 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
3051 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
3052 them up a bit more first.&lt;/p&gt;
3053
3054 &lt;p&gt;The development is coordinated on the
3055 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen&quot;&gt;#frikanalen IRC
3056 channel&lt;/a&gt; (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
3057 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen&quot;&gt;the
3058 frikanalen mailing list&lt;/a&gt;. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
3059 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
3060 development.&lt;/p&gt;
3061 </description>
3062         </item>
3063
3064         <item>
3065                 <title>Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</title>
3066                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html</link>
3067                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html</guid>
3068                 <pubDate>Wed, 27 Feb 2013 20:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
3069                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Dr. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stallman.org/&quot;&gt;Richard Stallman&lt;/a&gt;,
3070 founder of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsf.org/&quot;&gt;Free Software Foundation&lt;/a&gt;,
3071 is giving &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/&quot;&gt;a
3072 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00&lt;/a&gt;.  The event is public
3073 and organised by &lt;a href=&quot;&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)&lt;/a&gt;
3074 (where I am the chair of the board) and
3075 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friprog.no/&quot;&gt;The Norwegian Open Source Competence
3076 Center&lt;/a&gt;.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
3077 GNU», with this description:
3078
3079 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3080 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users&#39; freedom to
3081 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
3082 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
3083 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
3084 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3085
3086 &lt;p&gt;The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
3087 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
3088 am really curious how many will show up.  See
3089 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/&quot;&gt;the event
3090 page&lt;/a&gt; for the location details.&lt;/p&gt;
3091 </description>
3092         </item>
3093
3094         <item>
3095                 <title>Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</title>
3096                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html</link>
3097                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html</guid>
3098                 <pubDate>Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
3099                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
3100 now a great source of free maps available from
3101 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html&quot;&gt;Frikart&lt;/a&gt;.  To
3102 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
3103 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
3104 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
3105 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
3106 &quot;Trails - overlay map&quot; and &quot;Cross country - overlay map&quot; (see the web
3107 page for descriptions).&lt;/p&gt;
3108
3109 &lt;p&gt;The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
3110 map you can just edit the
3111 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/&quot;&gt;OpenStreetmap&lt;/a&gt; map source
3112 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3113 </description>
3114         </item>
3115
3116         <item>
3117                 <title>&quot;Electronic&quot; paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</title>
3118                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html</link>
3119                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html</guid>
3120                 <pubDate>Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
3121                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
3122 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura&quot;&gt;solution promoted
3123 by the Norwegian government&lt;/a&gt; require that invoices are sent through
3124 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
3125 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
3126 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
3127 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
3128 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
3129 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
3130 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
3131 &quot;electronic&quot; information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
3132 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
3133 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
3134 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
3135 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard&quot;&gt;the vCard format&lt;/a&gt;, as
3136 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.&lt;/p&gt;
3137
3138 &lt;p&gt;The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
3139 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
3140 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
3141 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;ask
3142 for donations to the Debian Edu project&lt;/a&gt; and thus have bank account
3143 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
3144 fields:&lt;/p&gt;
3145
3146 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3147 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
3148 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
3149 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
3150 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
3151 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
3152 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
3153 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
3154 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3155
3156 &lt;p&gt;The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
3157 answer regarding
3158 &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file&quot;&gt;how
3159 to put bank account information into a vCard&lt;/a&gt;.  For payments in
3160 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
3161 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.&lt;/p&gt;
3162
3163 &lt;p&gt;The complete vCard could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
3164
3165 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
3166 BEGIN:VCARD
3167 VERSION:2.1
3168 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
3169 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
3170 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
3171 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
3172 REV:20130212T095000Z
3173 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
3174 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
3175 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
3176 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
3177 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
3178 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
3179 END:VCARD
3180 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3181
3182 &lt;p&gt;The resulting QR code created using
3183 &lt;a href=&quot;http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/&quot;&gt;qrencode&lt;/a&gt; would look
3184 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
3185 phone, or for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://zbar.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;zbar
3186 bar code reader&lt;/a&gt; and feed right into the approval and accounting
3187 system.&lt;/p&gt;
3188
3189 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3190
3191 &lt;p&gt;The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
3192 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
3193 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
3194 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
3195
3196 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-02-12 11:30&lt;/strong&gt;: Added KID to the proposal
3197 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.&lt;/p&gt;
3198 </description>
3199         </item>
3200
3201         <item>
3202                 <title>Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</title>
3203                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html</link>
3204                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html</guid>
3205                 <pubDate>Sun, 10 Feb 2013 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
3206                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img align=&quot;left&quot; style=&quot;margin-right:25px;&quot; src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3207
3208 &lt;p&gt;With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
3209 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
3210 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
3211 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
3212 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
3213 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
3214 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
3215 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
3216 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
3217 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
3218 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.&lt;/p&gt;
3219
3220 &lt;p&gt;But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
3221 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
3222 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick&quot;&gt;Tellstick&lt;/a&gt; and RF
3223 switches at the local &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clasohlson.com/&quot;&gt;Clas
3224 Ohlson&lt;/a&gt; shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
3225 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
3226 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
3227 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
3228 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
3229 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net&quot;&gt;Tellstick
3230 Net&lt;/a&gt; to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
3231 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
3232 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
3233 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
3234 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
3235 ones own
3236 &lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware&quot;&gt;firmware
3237 with local access&lt;/A&gt; instead of being controlled by a Swedish
3238 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
3239 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
3240 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
3241 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
3242 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
3243 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
3244 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
3245 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
3246 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;
3247
3248 &lt;p&gt;We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
3249 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
3250 &quot;morning light&quot; was turned on and signalled that the morning had
3251 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
3252 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
3253 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;
3254
3255 &lt;p&gt;A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
3256 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
3257 can also delay it if we want to.&lt;/p&gt;
3258 </description>
3259         </item>
3260
3261         <item>
3262                 <title>Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</title>
3263                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</link>
3264                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html</guid>
3265                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Feb 2013 09:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3266                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
3267 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;last
3268 bitcoin related blog post&lt;/a&gt; mentioned that the new
3269 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin package&lt;/a&gt; for
3270 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
3271 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
3272 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
3273 version too.&lt;/p&gt;
3274
3275 &lt;p&gt;But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
3276 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
3277 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
3278 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
3279 architectures (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/672524&quot;&gt;BTS #672524&lt;/a&gt;).
3280 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
3281 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
3282 failing, please let us know via the BTS.&lt;/p&gt;
3283
3284 &lt;p&gt;One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
3285 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
3286 if it run short on space (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/696715&quot;&gt;BTS
3287 #696715&lt;/a&gt;).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
3288 it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3289
3290 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3291 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3292 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3293 </description>
3294         </item>
3295
3296         <item>
3297                 <title>Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</title>
3298                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</link>
3299                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html</guid>
3300                 <pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3301                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I
3302 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;asked
3303 for testers&lt;/a&gt; for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
3304 pluggable hardware devices, which I
3305 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;set
3306 out to create&lt;/a&gt; earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
3307 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
3308 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
3309 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
3310 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
3311 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
3312 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git&quot;&gt;collab-maint&lt;/a&gt;
3313 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is &lt;strong&gt;Isenkram&lt;/strong&gt;.
3314 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use&lt;/p&gt;
3315
3316 &lt;pre&gt;
3317 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
3318 cd isenkram &amp;&amp; git-buildpackage -us -uc
3319 &lt;/pre&gt;
3320
3321 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
3322 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
3323 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
3324 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
3325
3326 &lt;p&gt;If you wonder what &#39;isenkram&#39; is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
3327 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
3328 stuff, in other words.  I&#39;ve been told it is the Norwegian variant of
3329 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
3330 word.&lt;/p&gt;
3331
3332 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-26&lt;/strong&gt;: Added -us -us to build
3333 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
3334 process.&lt;/p&gt;
3335
3336 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-27&lt;/strong&gt;: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
3337 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.&lt;/p&gt;
3338 </description>
3339         </item>
3340
3341         <item>
3342                 <title>First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</title>
3343                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
3344                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
3345                 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3346                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Early this month I set out to try to
3347 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;improve
3348 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices&lt;/a&gt;.  Now my
3349 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
3350 it, fetch the
3351 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;source
3352 from the Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;, build and install the
3353 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
3354 autostart script.&lt;/p&gt;
3355
3356 &lt;p&gt;The design is simple:&lt;/p&gt;
3357
3358 &lt;ul&gt;
3359
3360 &lt;li&gt;Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
3361 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
3362
3363 &lt;li&gt;This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
3364 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
3365 initially did.&lt;/li&gt;
3366
3367 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
3368 the APT database, a database
3369 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup&quot;&gt;available
3370 via HTTP&lt;/a&gt; and a database available as part of the package.&lt;/li&gt;
3371
3372 &lt;li&gt;If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
3373 isn&#39;t installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
3374 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
3375 package or packages.&lt;/li&gt;
3376
3377 &lt;li&gt;If the user click on the &#39;install package now&#39; button, ask
3378 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.&lt;/li&gt;
3379
3380 &lt;li&gt;aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
3381 package while showing progress information in a window.&lt;/li&gt;
3382
3383 &lt;/ul&gt;
3384
3385 &lt;p&gt;I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
3386 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
3387 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
3388 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.&lt;/p&gt;
3389
3390 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png&quot;&gt;
3391 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png&quot;&gt;
3392 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png&quot;&gt;
3393 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png&quot;&gt;
3394 &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png&quot; width=&quot;70%&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3395
3396 &lt;p&gt;The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
3397 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
3398 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
3399 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
3400 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
3401 method.  I&#39;ve dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
3402 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
3403 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.&lt;/p&gt;
3404
3405 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-21 16:50&lt;/strong&gt;: Due to popular demand,
3406 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
3407 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;svn checkout
3408 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
3409 hw-support-handler; debuild&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;.  If you lack debuild, install the
3410 devscripts package.&lt;/p&gt;
3411
3412 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-23 12:00&lt;/strong&gt;: The project is now
3413 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
3414 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
3415 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html&quot;&gt;build
3416 instructions&lt;/a&gt; for details.&lt;/p&gt;
3417 </description>
3418         </item>
3419
3420         <item>
3421                 <title>Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</title>
3422                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</link>
3423                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html</guid>
3424                 <pubDate>Sat, 19 Jan 2013 09:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
3425                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
3426 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
3427 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
3428 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
3429 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
3430 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
3431 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
3432 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
3433 not a durable solution.
3434
3435 &lt;p&gt;My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
3436 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)&lt;/p&gt;
3437
3438 &lt;ul&gt;
3439
3440 &lt;li&gt;Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
3441   than A4).&lt;/li&gt;
3442 &lt;li&gt;Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.&lt;/li&gt;
3443 &lt;li&gt;Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.&lt;/li&gt;
3444 &lt;li&gt;Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.&lt;/li&gt;
3445 &lt;li&gt;Internal WIFI network card.&lt;/li&gt;
3446 &lt;li&gt;Internal Twisted Pair network card.&lt;/li&gt;
3447 &lt;li&gt;Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)&lt;/li&gt;
3448 &lt;li&gt;Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.&lt;/li&gt;
3449 &lt;li&gt;Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12&quot; (A4 paper
3450 size).&lt;/li&gt;
3451 &lt;li&gt;Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
3452   X.org packages.&lt;/li&gt;
3453 &lt;li&gt;Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
3454   the time).
3455
3456 &lt;/ul&gt;
3457
3458 &lt;p&gt;You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
3459 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
3460 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
3461 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
3462 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
3463 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
3464 Lenovo took over.  But I&#39;ve been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
3465 still be useful.&lt;/p&gt;
3466
3467 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
3468 external keyboard?  I&#39;ll have to check the
3469 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linux-laptop.net/&quot;&gt;Linux Laptops site&lt;/a&gt; for
3470 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
3471 of the vendors listed on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxpreloaded.com/&quot;&gt;Linux
3472 Pre-loaded site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3473 </description>
3474         </item>
3475
3476         <item>
3477                 <title>How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</title>
3478                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</link>
3479                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html</guid>
3480                 <pubDate>Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
3481                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
3482 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
3483 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins&quot;&gt;specifications
3484 done by Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt; and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
3485 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
3486 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
3487 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:&lt;/p&gt;
3488
3489 &lt;pre&gt;
3490 #!/usr/bin/python
3491 import sys
3492 import apt
3493 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
3494     cache = apt.Cache()
3495     cache.open(None)
3496     thepkgs = []
3497     for pkg in cache:
3498         version = pkg.candidate
3499         if version is None:
3500             version = pkg.installed
3501         if version is None:
3502             continue
3503         record = version.record
3504         if not record.has_key(&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;):
3505             continue
3506         mime_types = record[&#39;Npp-MimeType&#39;].split(&#39;,&#39;)
3507         for t in mime_types:
3508             t = t.rstrip().strip()
3509             if t == mimetype:
3510                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
3511     return thepkgs
3512 mimetype = &quot;audio/ogg&quot;
3513 if 1 &lt; len(sys.argv):
3514     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
3515 print &quot;Browser plugin packages supporting %s:&quot; % mimetype
3516 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
3517     print &quot;  %s&quot; %pkg
3518 &lt;/pre&gt;
3519
3520 &lt;p&gt;It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:&lt;/p&gt;
3521
3522 &lt;pre&gt;
3523 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
3524 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
3525   gecko-mediaplayer
3526 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
3527 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
3528   browser-plugin-gnash
3529 %
3530 &lt;/pre&gt;
3531
3532 &lt;p&gt;In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
3533 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
3534 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
3535 anyone working on adding it?&lt;/p&gt;
3536
3537 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-18 14:20&lt;/strong&gt;: The Debian BTS
3538 request for icweasel support for this feature is
3539 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/484010&quot;&gt;#484010&lt;/a&gt; from 2008 (and
3540 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/698426&quot;&gt;#698426&lt;/a&gt; from today).  Lack
3541 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
3542 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.&lt;/p&gt;
3543 </description>
3544         </item>
3545
3546         <item>
3547                 <title>What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</title>
3548                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</link>
3549                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html</guid>
3550                 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
3551                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal&quot;&gt;DEP-11
3552 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive&lt;/a&gt;, is a
3553 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
3554 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
3555 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
3556 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
3557 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
3558 downloaded by the browser.&lt;/p&gt;
3559
3560 &lt;p&gt;To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
3561 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
3562 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
3563 can be found on the
3564 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest&quot;&gt;Skolelinux FTP
3565 site&lt;/a&gt;.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
3566 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
3567 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
3568 The complete list is available from the link above.&lt;/p&gt;
3569
3570 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Stable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3571
3572 &lt;pre&gt;
3573   count MIME type
3574   ----- -----------------------
3575      32 text/plain
3576      30 audio/mpeg
3577      29 image/png
3578      28 image/jpeg
3579      27 application/ogg
3580      26 audio/x-mp3
3581      25 image/tiff
3582      25 image/gif
3583      22 image/bmp
3584      22 audio/x-wav
3585      20 audio/x-flac
3586      19 audio/x-mpegurl
3587      18 video/x-ms-asf
3588      18 audio/x-musepack
3589      18 audio/x-mpeg
3590      18 application/x-ogg
3591      17 video/mpeg
3592      17 audio/x-scpls
3593      17 audio/ogg
3594      16 video/x-ms-wmv
3595 &lt;/pre&gt;
3596
3597 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Testing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3598
3599 &lt;pre&gt;
3600   count MIME type
3601   ----- -----------------------
3602      33 text/plain
3603      32 image/png
3604      32 image/jpeg
3605      29 audio/mpeg
3606      27 image/gif
3607      26 image/tiff
3608      26 application/ogg
3609      25 audio/x-mp3
3610      22 image/bmp
3611      21 audio/x-wav
3612      19 audio/x-mpegurl
3613      19 audio/x-mpeg
3614      18 video/mpeg
3615      18 audio/x-scpls
3616      18 audio/x-flac
3617      18 application/x-ogg
3618      17 video/x-ms-asf
3619      17 text/html
3620      17 audio/x-musepack
3621      16 image/x-xbitmap
3622 &lt;/pre&gt;
3623
3624 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Debian Unstable:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3625
3626 &lt;pre&gt;
3627   count MIME type
3628   ----- -----------------------
3629      31 text/plain
3630      31 image/png
3631      31 image/jpeg
3632      29 audio/mpeg
3633      28 application/ogg
3634      27 image/gif
3635      26 image/tiff
3636      26 audio/x-mp3
3637      23 audio/x-wav
3638      22 image/bmp
3639      21 audio/x-flac
3640      20 audio/x-mpegurl
3641      19 audio/x-mpeg
3642      18 video/x-ms-asf
3643      18 video/mpeg
3644      18 audio/x-scpls
3645      18 application/x-ogg
3646      17 audio/x-musepack
3647      16 video/x-ms-wmv
3648      16 video/x-msvideo
3649 &lt;/pre&gt;
3650
3651 &lt;p&gt;I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
3652 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
3653 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
3654 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
3655
3656 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-16 13:35&lt;/strong&gt;: Updated numbers after
3657 discovering a typo in my script.&lt;/p&gt;
3658 </description>
3659         </item>
3660
3661         <item>
3662                 <title>Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</title>
3663                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</link>
3664                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html</guid>
3665                 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
3666                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I wrote about the
3667 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html&quot;&gt;modalias
3668 values provided by the Linux kernel&lt;/a&gt; following my hope for
3669 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html&quot;&gt;better
3670 dongle support in Debian&lt;/a&gt;.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
3671 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
3672 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
3673 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
3674 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
3675 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
3676
3677 &lt;p&gt;I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
3678 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
3679 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
3680 modalias.&lt;/p&gt;
3681
3682 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3683 Package: package-name
3684 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)&lt;/p&gt;
3685 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3686
3687 &lt;p&gt;It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
3688 for a given modalias value using this file.&lt;/p&gt;
3689
3690 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
3691 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):&lt;/p&gt;
3692
3693 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3694 Package: cheese
3695 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)&lt;/p&gt;
3696 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3697
3698 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
3699 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:&lt;/p&gt;
3700
3701 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3702 Package: pcmciautils
3703 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
3704 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3705
3706 &lt;p&gt;An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
3707 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:&lt;/p&gt;
3708
3709 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3710 Package: colorhug-client
3711 &lt;br&gt;Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)&lt;/p&gt;
3712 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3713
3714 &lt;p&gt;I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
3715 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
3716 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.&lt;/p&gt;
3717
3718 &lt;p&gt;By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
3719 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
3720 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
3721 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
3722 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I&#39;ve
3723 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
3724 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
3725 Raring.&lt;/p&gt;
3726
3727 &lt;p&gt;To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
3728 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
3729 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
3730 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
3731 try the
3732 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co&quot;&gt;hw-support-lookup&lt;/a&gt;
3733 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
3734 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
3735 repository where I currently work on my prototype.&lt;/p&gt;
3736
3737 &lt;p&gt;When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
3738 install yubikey-personalization:&lt;/p&gt;
3739
3740 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3741 % ./hw-support-lookup
3742 &lt;br&gt;yubikey-personalization
3743 &lt;br&gt;%
3744 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3745
3746 &lt;p&gt;When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
3747 propose to install the pcmciautils package:&lt;/p&gt;
3748
3749 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3750 % ./hw-support-lookup
3751 &lt;br&gt;pcmciautils
3752 &lt;br&gt;%
3753 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3754
3755 &lt;p&gt;If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
3756 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co&quot;&gt;my
3757 database&lt;/a&gt;, please tell me about it.&lt;/p&gt;
3758
3759 &lt;p&gt;It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
3760 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
3761 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
3762 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
3763 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
3764 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
3765 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
3766 see if it work.&lt;/p&gt;
3767
3768 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
3769 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
3770 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
3771 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
3772 </description>
3773         </item>
3774
3775         <item>
3776                 <title>Modalias strings - a practical way to map &quot;stuff&quot; to hardware</title>
3777                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</link>
3778                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html</guid>
3779                 <pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
3780                 <description>&lt;p&gt;While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
3781 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
3782 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
3783 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
3784 in
3785 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
3786 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;:
3787
3788 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modalias decoded&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3789
3790 &lt;p&gt;This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
3791 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
3792 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&quot;&gt;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
3793 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&quot;&gt;http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;,
3794 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&quot;&gt;http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt; and
3795 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&quot;&gt;http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&amp;view=markup&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;.
3796
3797 &lt;p&gt;The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
3798 this shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
3799
3800 &lt;pre&gt;
3801 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
3802 &lt;/pre&gt;
3803
3804 &lt;p&gt;The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
3805 using modinfo:&lt;/p&gt;
3806
3807 &lt;pre&gt;
3808 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
3809 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
3810 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
3811 %
3812 &lt;/pre&gt;
3813
3814 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PCI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3815
3816 &lt;p&gt;A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
3817 Bridge memory controller:&lt;/p&gt;
3818
3819 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3820 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
3821 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3822
3823 &lt;p&gt;This represent these values:&lt;/p&gt;
3824
3825 &lt;pre&gt;
3826  v   00008086  (vendor)
3827  d   00002770  (device)
3828  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
3829  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
3830  bc  06        (bus class)
3831  sc  00        (bus subclass)
3832  i   00        (interface)
3833 &lt;/pre&gt;
3834
3835 &lt;p&gt;The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from &#39;lspci
3836 -n&#39; as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
3837 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
3838 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).&lt;/p&gt;
3839
3840 &lt;p&gt;Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
3841 means.&lt;/p&gt;
3842
3843 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USB subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3844
3845 &lt;p&gt;Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
3846 USB hub in a laptop:&lt;/p&gt;
3847
3848 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3849 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
3850 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3851
3852 &lt;p&gt;Here is the values included in this alias:&lt;/p&gt;
3853
3854 &lt;pre&gt;
3855  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
3856  p    0001  (device product)
3857  d    0206  (bcddevice)
3858  dc     09  (device class)
3859  dsc    00  (device subclass)
3860  dp     00  (device protocol)
3861  ic     09  (interface class)
3862  isc    00  (interface subclass)
3863  ip     00  (interface protocol)
3864 &lt;/pre&gt;
3865
3866 &lt;p&gt;The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
3867 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
3868 these alias entries show up:&lt;/p&gt;
3869
3870 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3871 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
3872 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
3873 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
3874 &lt;br&gt;usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
3875 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3876
3877 &lt;p&gt;Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
3878 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
3879 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.&lt;/p&gt;
3880
3881 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACPI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3882
3883 &lt;p&gt;The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
3884 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:&lt;/p&gt;
3885
3886 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3887 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
3888 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3889
3890 &lt;p&gt;The values between the colons are IDs.&lt;/p&gt;
3891
3892 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DMI subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3893
3894 &lt;p&gt;The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
3895 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
3896 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:&lt;/p&gt;
3897
3898 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3899 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
3900 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3901
3902 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
3903
3904 &lt;pre&gt;
3905  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
3906  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
3907  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
3908  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
3909  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
3910  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
3911  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
3912  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
3913  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
3914  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
3915  ct   10             (chassis type)
3916  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
3917 &lt;/pre&gt;
3918
3919 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
3920 found in the dmidecode source:&lt;/p&gt;
3921
3922 &lt;pre&gt;
3923   3 Desktop
3924   4 Low Profile Desktop
3925   5 Pizza Box
3926   6 Mini Tower
3927   7 Tower
3928   8 Portable
3929   9 Laptop
3930  10 Notebook
3931  11 Hand Held
3932  12 Docking Station
3933  13 All In One
3934  14 Sub Notebook
3935  15 Space-saving
3936  16 Lunch Box
3937  17 Main Server Chassis
3938  18 Expansion Chassis
3939  19 Sub Chassis
3940  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
3941  21 Peripheral Chassis
3942  22 RAID Chassis
3943  23 Rack Mount Chassis
3944  24 Sealed-case PC
3945  25 Multi-system
3946  26 CompactPCI
3947  27 AdvancedTCA
3948  28 Blade
3949  29 Blade Enclosing
3950 &lt;/pre&gt;
3951
3952 &lt;p&gt;The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
3953 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
3954 claim it is a desktop.&lt;/p&gt;
3955
3956 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SerIO subtype&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3957
3958 &lt;p&gt;This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
3959 test machine:&lt;/p&gt;
3960
3961 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
3962 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
3963 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3964
3965 &lt;p&gt;The values present are&lt;/p&gt;
3966
3967 &lt;pre&gt;
3968   ty  01  (type)
3969   pr  00  (prototype)
3970   id  00  (id)
3971   ex  00  (extra)
3972 &lt;/pre&gt;
3973
3974 &lt;p&gt;This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
3975 the valid values are.&lt;/p&gt;
3976
3977 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other subtypes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3978
3979 &lt;p&gt;There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
3980 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
3981 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
3982 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
3983 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
3984 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
3985 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.&lt;/p&gt;
3986
3987 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Looking up kernel modules using modalias values&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
3988
3989 &lt;p&gt;To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
3990 one can use the following shell script:&lt;/p&gt;
3991
3992 &lt;pre&gt;
3993   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
3994     echo &quot;$id&quot; ; \
3995     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends &quot;$id&quot;|sed &#39;s/^/  /&#39; ; \
3996   done
3997 &lt;/pre&gt;
3998
3999 &lt;p&gt;The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
4000 list is very long on my test machine):&lt;/p&gt;
4001
4002 &lt;pre&gt;
4003   acpi:ACPI0003:
4004     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
4005   acpi:device:
4006   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
4007   acpi:IBM0068:
4008     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
4009     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
4010     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
4011     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
4012   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4013     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
4014     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
4015     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
4016   [...]
4017 &lt;/pre&gt;
4018
4019 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4020 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4021 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4022 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel&quot;&gt;#debian-devel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4023
4024 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-01-15:&lt;/strong&gt; Rewrite &quot;cat $(find ...)&quot; to
4025 &quot;find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat&quot; to make sure it handle directories
4026 in /sys/ with space in them.&lt;/p&gt;
4027 </description>
4028         </item>
4029
4030         <item>
4031                 <title>Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</title>
4032                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</link>
4033                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html</guid>
4034                 <pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
4035                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
4036 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
4037 Launcher and updated the Debian package
4038 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile&quot;&gt;pymissile&lt;/a&gt; to make
4039 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
4040 also added a &quot;Modaliases&quot; header to test it in the Debian archive and
4041 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
4042 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
4043 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
4044 contribute.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/&quot;&gt;Upstream&lt;/a&gt;
4045 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
4046 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
4047 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
4048 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
4049 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
4050 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git&quot;&gt;gitweb
4051 view&lt;/a&gt; or use &quot;&lt;tt&gt;git clone
4052 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
4053 </description>
4054         </item>
4055
4056         <item>
4057                 <title>Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</title>
4058                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</link>
4059                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html</guid>
4060                 <pubDate>Wed, 9 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
4061                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
4062 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
4063 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
4064 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
4065 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
4066 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
4067 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
4068 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
4069 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
4070 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
4071 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.&lt;/p&gt;
4072
4073 &lt;p&gt;Some years ago, I proposed to
4074 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html&quot;&gt;use
4075 the discover subsystem to implement this&lt;/a&gt;.  The idea is fairly
4076 simple:
4077
4078 &lt;ul&gt;
4079
4080 &lt;li&gt;Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
4081   starting when a user log in.&lt;/li&gt;
4082
4083 &lt;li&gt;Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
4084   hardware is inserted into the computer.&lt;/li&gt;
4085
4086 &lt;li&gt;When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
4087   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
4088   packages.&lt;/li&gt;
4089
4090 &lt;li&gt;Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
4091   package, and make it easy to install it.&lt;/li&gt;
4092
4093 &lt;/ul&gt;
4094
4095 &lt;p&gt;I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
4096 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
4097 discover database to find packages and
4098 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.packagekit.org/&quot;&gt;PackageKit&lt;/a&gt; to install
4099 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
4100
4101 &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
4102 draft package is now checked into
4103 &lt;a href=&quot;http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/&quot;&gt;the
4104 Debian Edu subversion repository&lt;/a&gt;.  In the process, I updated the
4105 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
4106 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
4107 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
4108 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
4109 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html&quot;&gt;discover&lt;/a&gt;
4110 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
4111 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
4112 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
4113 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn&#39;t upload it to unstable
4114 because of the freeze).&lt;/p&gt;
4115
4116 &lt;p&gt;With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
4117 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
4118 inserted):&lt;/p&gt;
4119
4120 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4121
4122 &lt;p&gt;For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
4123 install the proposed packages by pressing the &quot;Please install
4124 program(s)&quot; button should to be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;
4125
4126 &lt;p&gt;If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
4127 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
4128 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if &#39;discover-pkginstall -l&#39;
4129 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
4130 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
4131 reportbug if it isn&#39;t.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
4132 such mapping, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
4133
4134 &lt;p&gt;This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
4135 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
4136 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
4137 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
4138 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
4139 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
4140 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
4141 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
4142 not be installed?&lt;/p&gt;
4143
4144 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
4145 please send me an email. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4146 </description>
4147         </item>
4148
4149         <item>
4150                 <title>New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</title>
4151                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</link>
4152                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html</guid>
4153                 <pubDate>Wed, 2 Jan 2013 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
4154                 <description>&lt;p&gt;During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
4155 &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx&quot;&gt;LEGO Mindstorm
4156 NXT&lt;/a&gt;.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
4157 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
4158 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
4159 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
4160 &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego&quot;&gt;#debian-lego&lt;/a&gt; (server
4161 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
4162 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
4163 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4164
4165 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-01-03: A
4166 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners&quot;&gt;project page&lt;/a&gt;
4167 including links to Lego related packages is now available.&lt;/p&gt;
4168 </description>
4169         </item>
4170
4171         <item>
4172                 <title>A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</title>
4173                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html</link>
4174                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html</guid>
4175                 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Dec 2012 09:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
4176                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
4177 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;
4178 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
4179 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
4180 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
4181 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
4182 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
4183 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
4184 cost around NOK 15&amp;nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
4185 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
4186 followed by many others. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4187
4188 &lt;p&gt;The public list of donors can be found on
4189 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;the
4190 donation page&lt;/a&gt; for the project, which also contain instructions if
4191 you want to donate to the project.&lt;/p&gt;
4192 </description>
4193         </item>
4194
4195         <item>
4196                 <title>How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</title>
4197                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
4198                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
4199                 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Dec 2012 20:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
4200                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
4201 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.&lt;/p&gt;
4202
4203 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;Bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the digital
4204 decentralised &quot;currency&quot; that allow people to transfer bitcoins
4205 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
4206 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
4207 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; is about to improve a bit.
4208 The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;new debian source
4209 package&lt;/a&gt; (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
4210 in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html&quot;&gt;the NEW queue&lt;/A&gt;
4211 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
4212 name.&lt;/p&gt;
4213
4214 &lt;p&gt;And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
4215 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
4216 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:&lt;/p&gt;
4217
4218 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4219 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
4220 cd bitcoin
4221 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
4222 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
4223 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4224
4225 &lt;p&gt;You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
4226 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
4227 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
4228 client will download the complete set of bitcoin &quot;blocks&quot;, which need
4229 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
4230 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
4231 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
4232 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
4233 not be able to get all the features out of the client.&lt;/p&gt;
4234
4235 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4236 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4237 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4238 </description>
4239         </item>
4240
4241         <item>
4242                 <title>A word on bitcoin support in Debian</title>
4243                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</link>
4244                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</guid>
4245                 <pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:59:00 +0100</pubDate>
4246                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since I wrote about
4247 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the decentralised
4248 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
4249 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
4250 state of &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin in
4251 Debian&lt;/a&gt; again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
4252 is now maintained by a
4253 &lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;team of
4254 people&lt;/a&gt;, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
4255 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
4256 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
4257 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
4258 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
4259 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
4260 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
4261 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
4262 Corallo in a
4263 &lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin&quot;&gt;PPA for
4264 Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt;, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
4265 Debian package.&lt;/p&gt;
4266
4267 &lt;p&gt;After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
4268 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
4269 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
4270 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
4271 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
4272 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
4273 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html&quot;&gt;a
4274 patch to backport&lt;/a&gt; the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
4275 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
4276 new version to unstable.
4277
4278 &lt;p&gt;I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
4279 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
4280 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
4281 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
4282 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
4283 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
4284 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
4285 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
4286 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
4287 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
4288 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
4289 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
4290 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
4291 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
4292 have not tested them.&lt;/p&gt;
4293
4294 &lt;p&gt;My
4295 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html&quot;&gt;experiment
4296 with bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
4297 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
4298 years ago, as can be
4299 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;seen
4300 on the blockexplorer service&lt;/a&gt;.  Thank you everyone for your
4301 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
4302 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
4303 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
4304 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
4305 the same address as last time,
4306 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4307 </description>
4308         </item>
4309
4310         <item>
4311                 <title>Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</title>
4312                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html</link>
4313                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html</guid>
4314                 <pubDate>Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
4315                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I came across
4316 &lt;a href=&quot;http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/&quot;&gt;a blog post from Joey
4317 Hess&lt;/a&gt; describing &lt;a href=&quot;http://ledger-cli.org/&quot;&gt;ledger&lt;/a&gt; and
4318 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
4319 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
4320 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
4321 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
4322 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
4323 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
4324 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
4325
4326 are at least &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports&quot;&gt;five
4327 different implementations&lt;/a&gt; able to read the format.  An example
4328 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
4329 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:&lt;/p&gt;
4330
4331 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4332 2004-05-27 Book Store
4333       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
4334       Liabilities:Visa
4335 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4336
4337 &lt;p&gt;The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
4338 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
4339 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/&quot;&gt;Christine
4340 Spang&lt;/a&gt;,
4341 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html&quot;&gt;Pete
4342 Keen&lt;/a&gt;,
4343 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/&quot;&gt;Andrew
4344 Cantino&lt;/a&gt; and
4345 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/&quot;&gt;Ronald
4346 Ip&lt;/a&gt; describing how they use it, as well as a post from
4347 &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo&quot;&gt;Bradley
4348 M. Kuhn&lt;/a&gt; at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
4349 recommendations fitting my need.&lt;/p&gt;
4350
4351 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html&quot;&gt;ledger&lt;/a&gt;
4352 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
4353 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html&quot;&gt;hledger&lt;/a&gt;
4354 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
4355 seemed the best choice to get started.&lt;/p&gt;
4356
4357 &lt;p&gt;To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
4358 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger&quot;&gt;web scraper&lt;/a&gt; for
4359 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lodo.no/&quot;&gt;LODO&lt;/a&gt;, the accounting system used by
4360 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt; association, and started to
4361 play with the data set.  I&#39;m not really deeply into accounting, but I
4362 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
4363 using the &quot;&lt;tt&gt;ledger balance&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; command.  But I will have to
4364 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
4365 for the organisations I am involved in.&lt;/p&gt;
4366 </description>
4367         </item>
4368
4369         <item>
4370                 <title>Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</title>
4371                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html</link>
4372                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html</guid>
4373                 <pubDate>Thu, 6 Dec 2012 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
4374                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of
4375 Oslo&lt;/a&gt;, we use the
4376 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/&quot;&gt;Cerebrum user
4377 administration system&lt;/a&gt; to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
4378 I&#39;ve known since the system was written that the server is providing
4379 an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC&quot;&gt;XML-RPC&lt;/a&gt; API, but
4380 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
4381 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
4382 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
4383 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
4384 Python.&lt;/p&gt;
4385
4386 &lt;p&gt;I started by looking at the source of the Java
4387 &lt;a href=&quot;http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/&quot;&gt;bofh
4388 client&lt;/a&gt;, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
4389 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
4390 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html&quot;&gt;a
4391 simple example in&lt;/a&gt; the XML-RPC howto.&lt;/p&gt;
4392
4393 &lt;p&gt;This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
4394 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
4395 user currently logged in:&lt;/p&gt;
4396
4397 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4398 #!/usr/bin/env python
4399 import getpass
4400 import xmlrpclib
4401 server_url = &#39;https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000&#39;;
4402 username = getpass.getuser()
4403 password = getpass.getpass()
4404 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
4405 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
4406 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
4407 print server.run_command(sessionid, &quot;user_info&quot;, username)
4408 result = server.logout(sessionid)
4409 print result
4410 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4411
4412 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
4413 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.&lt;/p&gt;
4414 </description>
4415         </item>
4416
4417         <item>
4418                 <title>Why isn&#39;t the value of copyright taxed?</title>
4419                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html</link>
4420                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html</guid>
4421                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Nov 2012 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
4422                 <description>&lt;p&gt;While working on a
4423 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;Norwegian
4424 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig&lt;/a&gt; (76% done),
4425 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
4426 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
4427 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
4428 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.&lt;/p&gt;
4429
4430 &lt;p&gt;I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
4431 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
4432 -15-30-19-00/&quot;&gt;presentation
4433 by John Perry Barlow&lt;/a&gt;, and concluded that it was best to put it
4434 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
4435 argument that copyrighted works are &quot;intellectual property&quot;, as the
4436 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
4437 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
4438 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I&#39;m sharing the idea here to
4439 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
4440 arguments.&lt;/p&gt;
4441
4442 &lt;p&gt;Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
4443 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
4444 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
4445 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
4446 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
4447 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
4448 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
4449 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?&lt;/p&gt;
4450
4451 &lt;p&gt;If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
4452 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
4453 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
4454 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
4455 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
4456 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
4457 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
4458 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
4459 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
4460 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
4461 correct right holder.&lt;/p&gt;
4462
4463 &lt;p&gt;If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
4464 they will have a small incentive to &quot;disown&quot; their copyright, and let
4465 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
4466 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
4467 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
4468 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
4469 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
4470 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
4471 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
4472 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
4473 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
4474 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
4475 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
4476 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.&lt;/p&gt;
4477
4478 &lt;p&gt;The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
4479 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
4480 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .&lt;/p&gt;
4481
4482 &lt;p&gt;Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
4483 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.&lt;/p&gt;
4484 </description>
4485         </item>
4486
4487         <item>
4488                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</title>
4489                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html</link>
4490                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html</guid>
4491                 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
4492                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is another interview with one of the people in the &lt;a
4493 href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
4494 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
4495 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
4496 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
4497 the people behind the German
4498 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/&quot;&gt;IT-Zukunft Schule&lt;/a&gt;&quot;
4499 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
4500 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)&lt;/p&gt;
4501
4502 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4503
4504 &lt;p&gt;I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
4505 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with &quot;my man&quot; Mike Gabriel, my
4506 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
4507
4508 &lt;p&gt;At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
4509 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
4510 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
4511 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
4512 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
4513 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.&lt;/p&gt;
4514
4515 &lt;p&gt;In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
4516 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
4517 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
4518 working in our own school project &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot; in North
4519 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
4520 relationship management and the communication processes in the
4521 project.&lt;/p&gt;
4522
4523 &lt;p&gt;Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
4524 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
4525 and a yoga teacher.&lt;/p&gt;
4526
4527 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4528 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4529
4530 &lt;p&gt;I fell in love with Mike ;-).&lt;/p&gt;
4531
4532 &lt;p&gt;Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
4533 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
4534 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
4535 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
4536 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
4537 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
4538 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
4539 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
4540 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
4541 parents.&lt;/p&gt;
4542
4543 &lt;p&gt;Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
4544 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
4545 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
4546 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
4547 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
4548 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
4549 Germany.&lt;/p&gt;
4550
4551 &lt;p&gt;For information about our school project you can read
4552 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html&quot;&gt;the
4553 interview with Mike Gabriel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4554
4555 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4556 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4557
4558 &lt;p&gt;First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
4559 answer comes rather from a social point of view.&lt;/p&gt;
4560
4561 &lt;p&gt;The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
4562 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
4563 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
4564 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
4565 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
4566 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
4567 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
4568 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
4569 teachers, parents...&lt;/p&gt;
4570
4571 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4572 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4573
4574 &lt;p&gt;I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
4575 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
4576
4577 &lt;p&gt;What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
4578 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
4579 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
4580 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
4581 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
4582
4583 &lt;p&gt;Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
4584 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
4585 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
4586 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
4587 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
4588 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
4589 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
4590
4591 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4592
4593 &lt;p&gt;On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
4594 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
4595 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
4596 my N900 running with Maemo.&lt;/p&gt;
4597
4598 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4599 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4600
4601 &lt;p&gt;I am really convinced that in our school project &quot;IT-Zukunft
4602 Schule&quot; we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
4603 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
4604 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
4605 strategy has three crucial pillars:&lt;/p&gt;
4606
4607 &lt;ul&gt;
4608
4609 &lt;li&gt;We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
4610 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
4611 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.&lt;/li&gt;
4612
4613 &lt;li&gt;Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
4614 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
4615 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
4616 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
4617 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
4618 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
4619 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.&lt;/li&gt;
4620
4621 &lt;li&gt;Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
4622 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
4623 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
4624 offer to become more and more independent from us.&lt;/li&gt;
4625
4626 &lt;/ul&gt;
4627 </description>
4628         </item>
4629
4630         <item>
4631                 <title>The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</title>
4632                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html</link>
4633                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html</guid>
4634                 <pubDate>Sun, 4 Nov 2012 08:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
4635                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
4636 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf&quot;&gt;releasing
4637 a report (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; about virtual currencies and
4638 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;.  It is interesting to
4639 see how a member of the bitcoin community
4640 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html&quot;&gt;receive
4641 the report&lt;/a&gt;.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
4642 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
4643 competition.  My thoughts go to the
4644 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl&quot;&gt;Wörgl experiment&lt;/a&gt; with
4645 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
4646 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
4647 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
4648 powerful forces to work against it.&lt;/p&gt;
4649
4650 &lt;p&gt;While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
4651 that the community already seem to have
4652 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down&quot;&gt;experienced
4653 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme&lt;/a&gt;.  Not very surprising, given
4654 how members of &quot;small&quot; communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
4655 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
4656 wealth is available.&lt;/p&gt;
4657 </description>
4658         </item>
4659
4660         <item>
4661                 <title>12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</title>
4662                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html</link>
4663                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html</guid>
4664                 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
4665                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I work at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt;
4666 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
4667 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
4668 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the NUUG association&lt;/a&gt;, which in turn
4669 make me a member of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usenix.org/&quot;&gt;USENIX&lt;/a&gt;.  NUUG
4670 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
4671 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
4672 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
4673 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
4674 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login&quot;&gt;;login:&lt;/a&gt; in the
4675 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
4676 it every time.&lt;/p&gt;
4677
4678 &lt;p&gt;In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
4679 article by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skendric.com/&quot;&gt;Stuart Kendrick&lt;/a&gt; from
4680 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
4681 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down&quot;&gt;What
4682 Takes Us Down&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (longer version also
4683 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf&quot;&gt;available
4684 from his own site&lt;/a&gt;), where he report what he found when he
4685 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
4686 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
4687 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
4688 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
4689 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.&lt;p&gt;
4690
4691 &lt;p&gt;The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
4692 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
4693 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
4694 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
4695 article: First the unplanned outage:
4696
4697 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4698 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
4699 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
4700 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
4701 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
4702 Duration:    40 minutes
4703 Scope:       Exchange 2003
4704 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
4705              a cluster failover.
4706
4707 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
4708              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
4709 Technician:  [xxx]
4710 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4711
4712 Next the planned outage:
4713
4714 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
4715 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
4716 Severity:    Major (Planned)
4717 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
4718 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
4719 Duration:    10 hours
4720 Scope:       H2 Transport
4721 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
4722              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
4723              4510s.
4724 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
4725              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
4726              connectivity.
4727 Technician:  [xxx]
4728 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
4729
4730 &lt;p&gt;He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
4731 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
4732 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
4733 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
4734 people to write &#39;2012-06-16 06:00 +0000&#39; instead of the start time
4735 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
4736 that could be improved, read the article for the details.&lt;/p&gt;
4737
4738 &lt;p&gt;I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
4739 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
4740 university too.  We do register
4741 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/&quot;&gt;planned
4742 changes and outages in a calendar&lt;/a&gt;, and report the to a mailing
4743 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
4744 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
4745 for other sites to consider too?&lt;/p&gt;
4746 </description>
4747         </item>
4748
4749         <item>
4750                 <title>Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</title>
4751                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html</link>
4752                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html</guid>
4753                 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4754                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
4755 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/&quot;&gt;how
4756 Amazon erased the books from a customer&#39;s kindle, locked the account
4757 and refuse to tell the customer why&lt;/a&gt;.  If a real book store did
4758 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
4759 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
4760 background information is available in Norwegian from
4761 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon&quot;&gt;digi.no&lt;/a&gt;.
4762 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
4763 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
4764 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
4765 willing to
4766 &lt;a href=&quot;http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html&quot;&gt;
4767 break into customers equipment and remove the books&lt;/a&gt; people had
4768 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
4769 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
4770 sounded like
4771 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html&quot;&gt;Amazon
4772 would never do that again&lt;/a&gt;.  And here we are, three years
4773 later.&lt;/p&gt;
4774
4775 &lt;p&gt;And thought this action is
4776 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende&quot;&gt;against
4777 Norwegian regulations and law&lt;/a&gt;, it is according to the terms of use
4778 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
4779 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
4780 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
4781 rights.&lt;/p&gt;
4782
4783 &lt;p&gt;Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
4784 unacceptable terms.  For example
4785 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Gutenberg&lt;/a&gt; (about 40,000
4786 books), &lt;a href=&quot;http://runeberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Runenberg&lt;/a&gt; (1,652
4787 books) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/details/texts&quot;&gt;The Internet
4788 Archive&lt;/a&gt; (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
4789 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.&lt;/p&gt;
4790
4791 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
4792 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
4793 restored the account of the user, as reported by
4794 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon&quot;&gt;digi.no&lt;/a&gt;
4795 and &lt;a href=&quot;http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487&quot;&gt;NRK&lt;/a&gt;.
4796 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
4797 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
4798 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
4799 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
4800 reading two opinions from
4801 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm&quot;&gt;Simon
4802 Phipps&lt;/a&gt; and
4803 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm&quot;&gt;Glen
4804 Moody&lt;/a&gt; if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
4805 details about the original story.&lt;/p&gt;
4806 </description>
4807         </item>
4808
4809         <item>
4810                 <title>The fight for freedom and privacy</title>
4811                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html</link>
4812                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html</guid>
4813                 <pubDate>Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
4814                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
4815 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
4816 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
4817 across a marvellous drawing by
4818 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.claybennett.com/about.html&quot;&gt;Clay Bennett&lt;/a&gt;
4819 visualising some of what is going on.
4820
4821 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html&quot;&gt;
4822 &lt;img src=&quot;http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4823
4824 &lt;blockquote&gt;
4825 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
4826 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
4827 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
4828
4829 &lt;p&gt;Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
4830 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
4831 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
4832 just remember &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon&quot;&gt;the
4833 Panopticon&lt;/a&gt;, and can not help to think that we are slowly
4834 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.&lt;/p&gt;
4835 </description>
4836         </item>
4837
4838         <item>
4839                 <title>ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</title>
4840                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html</link>
4841                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html</guid>
4842                 <pubDate>Fri, 12 Oct 2012 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
4843                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Thanks to a blog post by
4844 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html&quot;&gt;Eddy
4845 Petrișor&lt;/a&gt;, I became aware of yet another &quot;alternative medicine&quot;
4846 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
4847 According to the originating blog post about the detox &quot;cure&quot;
4848 &lt;a href=&quot;http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/&quot;&gt;ColonHelp
4849 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions&lt;/a&gt;, the producer
4850 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
4851 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
4852 wordpress.com, and they reply was &quot;We can confirm that Zenyth is
4853 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
4854 don&#39;t believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
4855 matter&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
4856
4857 &lt;p&gt;The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
4858 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
4859 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
4860 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
4861 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
4862 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
4863 to argue its side.&lt;/p&gt;
4864
4865 &lt;p&gt;This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
4866 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
4867 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect&quot;&gt;Streisand
4868 effect&lt;/a&gt; can make it rethink its strategy.&lt;/p&gt;
4869
4870 &lt;p&gt;What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
4871 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html&quot;&gt;a list of
4872 victims of detoxification&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4873 </description>
4874         </item>
4875
4876         <item>
4877                 <title>Why is your local library collecting the &quot;wrong&quot; computer books?</title>
4878                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html</link>
4879                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html</guid>
4880                 <pubDate>Wed, 3 Oct 2012 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
4881                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
4882 &lt;a href=&quot;http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge&quot;&gt;about
4883 the computer science book collection available in his local
4884 library&lt;/a&gt;, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
4885 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
4886 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
4887 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
4888 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
4889 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
4890 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
4891 recently published books.&lt;/p&gt;
4892
4893 &lt;p&gt;During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
4894 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
4895 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
4896 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
4897 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
4898 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
4899 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
4900 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
4901 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
4902 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens&quot;&gt;Stevens
4903 collection&lt;/a&gt;).  I picked several of the generic O&#39;Reilly books (ie
4904 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
4905 products) and stayed away from the &#39;teach yourself X in N days&#39; class.
4906 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
4907 for the library that evening.&lt;/p&gt;
4908
4909 &lt;p&gt;The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
4910 going to know that for example
4911 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming&quot;&gt;The
4912 Practice of Programming&lt;/a&gt; is a must-have in any computer library,
4913 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
4914 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
4915 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
4916 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
4917 book right away.&lt;/p&gt;
4918 </description>
4919         </item>
4920
4921         <item>
4922                 <title>Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</title>
4923                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</link>
4924                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</guid>
4925                 <pubDate>Sun, 23 Sep 2012 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
4926                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian &lt;a
4927 href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version of the 2004 book &lt;a
4928 href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig.
4929 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
4930 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
4931 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
4932
4933 When I started, I
4934 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;called
4935 for volunteers&lt;/a&gt; to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
4936 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
4937 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
4938 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
4939 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
4940 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:&lt;/p&gt;
4941
4942 &lt;img width=&quot;80%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png&quot;&gt;
4943
4944 &lt;p&gt;Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
4945 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
4946 the project files currently available from
4947 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
4948
4949 &lt;p&gt;If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
4950 the updated
4951 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;
4952 and
4953 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true&quot;&gt;EPUB&lt;/a&gt;
4954 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
4955 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
4956 saw no point in linking to that version.&lt;/p&gt;
4957 </description>
4958         </item>
4959
4960         <item>
4961                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</title>
4962                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html</link>
4963                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html</guid>
4964                 <pubDate>Mon, 17 Sep 2012 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
4965                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
4966 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
4967 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
4968 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
4969 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
4970 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
4971 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.&lt;/p&gt;
4972
4973 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4974
4975 &lt;p&gt;I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
4976 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of &quot;light&quot;
4977 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
4978 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
4979 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
4980 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
4981 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
4982 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
4983 training is anyway very important&lt;/p&gt;
4984
4985 &lt;p&gt;I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
4986 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spse.ch/&quot;&gt;SPSE school&lt;/a&gt; (secondary) is a very
4987 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
4988 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
4989 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
4990
4991 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4992 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
4993
4994 &lt;p&gt;Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
4995 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
4996 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn&#39;t
4997 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
4998 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
4999 hole.&lt;/p&gt;
5000
5001 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5002 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5003
5004 &lt;p&gt;Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
5005 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
5006 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
5007 engineered platform and you don&#39;t have to start to build up your PDC
5008 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I&#39;ve already done this once and I
5009 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
5010 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
5011 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
5012 hassle.&lt;/p&gt;
5013
5014 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5015 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5016
5017 &lt;p&gt;The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
5018 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
5019 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
5020 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
5021 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
5022 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
5023 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
5024 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)&lt;/p&gt;
5025
5026 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5027
5028 &lt;p&gt;I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
5029 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
5030 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
5031 &lt;a href=&quot;http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html&quot;&gt;Perceus&lt;/a&gt;
5032 has the same...&lt;/p&gt;
5033
5034 &lt;p&gt;For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
5035 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
5036 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
5037 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.&lt;/p&gt;
5038
5039 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5040 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5041
5042 &lt;P&gt;I think that the only real argument that school managers &quot;hear&quot; is
5043 cost reduction. They don&#39;t give too much weight on quality, stability,
5044 just because they are normally not open to change.&lt;/p&gt;
5045
5046 &lt;p&gt;Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
5047 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
5048 don&#39;t.&lt;/p&gt;
5049
5050 &lt;p&gt;We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
5051 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
5052 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
5053 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
5054 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
5055 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
5056 Those who don&#39;t have such needs will hardly move to Linux.&lt;/p&gt;
5057 </description>
5058         </item>
5059
5060         <item>
5061                 <title>IETF activity to standardise video codec</title>
5062                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html</link>
5063                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html</guid>
5064                 <pubDate>Sat, 15 Sep 2012 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5065                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After the
5066 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html&quot;&gt;Opus
5067 codec made&lt;/a&gt; it into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/&quot;&gt;IETF&lt;/a&gt; as
5068 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716&quot;&gt;RFC 6716&lt;/a&gt;, I had a look
5069 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
5070 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
5071 area.  A non-&quot;working group&quot; mailing list
5072 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec&quot;&gt;video-codec&lt;/a&gt;
5073 was
5074 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html&quot;&gt;created 2012-08-20&lt;/a&gt;.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
5075 formal working group should be formed.&lt;/p&gt;
5076
5077 &lt;p&gt;I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
5078 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html&quot;&gt;an
5079 email from someone&lt;/a&gt; in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
5080 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
5081 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
5082 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
5083 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
5084 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;
5085
5086 &lt;p&gt;If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
5087 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
5088 IETF.&lt;/p&gt;
5089 </description>
5090         </item>
5091
5092         <item>
5093                 <title>IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</title>
5094                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html</link>
5095                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html</guid>
5096                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Sep 2012 13:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5097                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/&quot;&gt;IETF&lt;/a&gt; announced the
5098 publication of of
5099 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716&quot;&gt;RFC 6716, the Definition
5100 of the Opus Audio Codec&lt;/a&gt;, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
5101 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
5102 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
5103 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533&quot;&gt;RFC 3533&lt;/a&gt;, IETF
5104 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
5105 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
5106 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
5107 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
5108 multimedia content on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;
5109
5110 &lt;p&gt;IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
5111 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
5112 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
5113 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;
5114
5115 &lt;p&gt;Visit the &lt;a href=&quot;http://opus-codec.org/&quot;&gt;Opus project page&lt;/a&gt; if
5116 you want to learn more about the solution.&lt;/p&gt;
5117 </description>
5118         </item>
5119
5120         <item>
5121                 <title>Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</title>
5122                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
5123                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
5124                 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Sep 2012 13:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5125                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I
5126 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html&quot;&gt;mentioned
5127 this summer&lt;/a&gt;, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
5128 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
5129 &lt;a href=&quot;https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook&quot;&gt;Gitorious
5130 repository for the project&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5131
5132 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
5133 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
5134 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
5135 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.&lt;/p&gt;
5136
5137 &lt;p&gt;Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
5138 PostScript formats at
5139 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s Computer
5140 Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5141 </description>
5142         </item>
5143
5144         <item>
5145                 <title>Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don&#39;t forget Officeshots)</title>
5146                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html</link>
5147                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html</guid>
5148                 <pubDate>Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
5149                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
5150 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233&quot;&gt;Microsoft
5151 have been forced to open Office&lt;/a&gt;, and it made me remember and
5152 revisit the great site
5153 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;officeshots&lt;/a&gt; which allow you
5154 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
5155 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5156 </description>
5157         </item>
5158
5159         <item>
5160                 <title>Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</title>
5161                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</link>
5162                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html</guid>
5163                 <pubDate>Fri, 17 Aug 2012 21:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5164                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
5165 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version of the 2004 book
5166 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig,
5167 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
5168 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
5169 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
5170 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
5171 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
5172 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
5173 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
5174 summer I
5175 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;called
5176 for volunteers&lt;/a&gt; to help me, and I have been able to secure the
5177 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.&lt;/p&gt;
5178
5179 &lt;p&gt;Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
5180 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
5181 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
5182 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
5183 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
5184 progress:&lt;/p&gt;
5185
5186 &lt;img width=&quot;80%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot; src=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png&quot;&gt;
5187
5188 &lt;p&gt;The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
5189 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
5190 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
5191 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
5192 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
5193 english version of the docbook source.&lt;/p&gt;
5194
5195 &lt;p&gt;There is still need for translators and people with docbook
5196 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
5197 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
5198 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
5199 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
5200 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
5201 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
5202 project files currently available from &lt;a
5203 href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5204
5205 &lt;p&gt;If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
5206 the updated
5207 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;
5208 and
5209 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true&quot;&gt;EPUB&lt;/a&gt;
5210 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
5211 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
5212 saw no point in linking to that version.&lt;/p&gt;
5213 </description>
5214         </item>
5215
5216         <item>
5217                 <title>Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</title>
5218                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html</link>
5219                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html</guid>
5220                 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Aug 2012 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5221                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docbook.org/&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; one can specify
5222 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
5223 this information to pick the correct translations for &#39;chapter&#39;, &#39;see
5224 also&#39;, &#39;index&#39; etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
5225 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
5226 with &amp;lt;book lang=&quot;de&quot;&amp;gt;, and the document will show up with the
5227 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
5228 case for the language
5229 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html&quot;&gt;I
5230 am working with at the moment&lt;/a&gt;, Norwegian Bokmål.&lt;/p&gt;
5231
5232 &lt;p&gt;For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
5233 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
5234 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
5235 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
5236 of them do not handle it at all.&lt;/p&gt;
5237
5238 &lt;p&gt;A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
5239 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
5240 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
5241 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
5242 is &#39;no&#39;, Norwegian Nynorsk is &#39;nn&#39; and Norwegian Bokmål is &#39;nb&#39;.
5243 Historically the &#39;no&#39; language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
5244 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
5245 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
5246 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure &#39;no&#39; was an
5247 alias for &#39;nb&#39;.&lt;/p&gt;
5248
5249 &lt;p&gt;Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
5250 understand &#39;nn&#39;.  There are translations for &#39;no&#39;, but not &#39;nb&#39; (BTS
5251 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/684391&quot;&gt;#684391&lt;/a&gt;), but due to a bug
5252 (BTS &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/682936&quot;&gt;#682936&lt;/a&gt;) the &#39;no&#39;
5253 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
5254 recognise &#39;nn&#39; and &#39;nb&#39;, but not &#39;no&#39;.  The xmlto tool only recognise
5255 &#39;nn&#39; and &#39;nb&#39;, but not &#39;no&#39;.  The end result that there is no language
5256 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
5257 at the same time. :(&lt;/p&gt;
5258
5259 &lt;p&gt;The correct solution is to use &amp;lt;book lang=&quot;nb&quot;&amp;gt;, but it will
5260 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
5261 processors. :(&lt;/p&gt;
5262
5263 &lt;p&gt;Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/&lt;/p&gt;
5264 </description>
5265         </item>
5266
5267         <item>
5268                 <title>Best way to create a docbook book?</title>
5269                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html</link>
5270                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html</guid>
5271                 <pubDate>Tue, 31 Jul 2012 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5272                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I tried to send this text to the
5273 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/&quot;&gt;docbook-apps
5274 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org&lt;/a&gt;, but it only accept messages
5275 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
5276 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
5277 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
5278 out.&lt;/p&gt;
5279
5280 &lt;p&gt;I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
5281 learning curve at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
5282
5283 &lt;p&gt;To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
5284 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
5285 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
5286 available from
5287 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.
5288 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
5289 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
5290 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
5291 Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
5292
5293 &lt;p&gt;I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
5294 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
5295 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
5296 problems.&lt;/p&gt;
5297
5298 &lt;ul&gt;
5299
5300 &lt;li&gt;Using dblatex, the &amp;lt;part&amp;gt; handling is not the way I want to,
5301    as &amp;lt;/part&amp;gt; do not really end the &amp;lt;part&amp;gt;. (See
5302    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683166&quot;&gt;BTS report #683166&lt;/a&gt;), the
5303    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
5304    index references spanning several pages (See
5305    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/682901&quot;&gt;BTS report #682901&lt;/a&gt;), and
5306    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
5307    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/682936&quot;&gt;BTS report #682936&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
5308
5309 &lt;li&gt;Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
5310    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683163&quot;&gt;BTS report
5311    #683163&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;
5312
5313 &lt;li&gt;Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
5314    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
5315    footnote and text body, see
5316    &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/683197&quot;&gt;BTS report #683197&lt;/a&gt;), and
5317    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
5318    refs listed are not right).&lt;/li&gt;
5319
5320 &lt;li&gt;Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.&lt;/li&gt;
5321
5322 &lt;li&gt;Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
5323    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.&lt;/li&gt;
5324
5325 &lt;/ul&gt;
5326
5327 &lt;p&gt;So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
5328 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
5329 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?&lt;/p&gt;
5330
5331 &lt;p&gt;What about HTML and EPUB versions?&lt;/p&gt;
5332 </description>
5333         </item>
5334
5335         <item>
5336                 <title>Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</title>
5337                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html</link>
5338                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html</guid>
5339                 <pubDate>Sat, 21 Jul 2012 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
5340                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I reported earlier that I am working on
5341 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;a
5342 norwegian version&lt;/a&gt; of the book
5343 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig.
5344 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
5345 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
5346 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
5347 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5348
5349 &lt;p&gt;I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
5350 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
5351 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
5352 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
5353 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
5354 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
5355 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
5356 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
5357 print. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5358
5359 &lt;p&gt;The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
5360 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
5361 language.&lt;/p&gt;
5362 </description>
5363         </item>
5364
5365         <item>
5366                 <title>Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</title>
5367                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html</link>
5368                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html</guid>
5369                 <pubDate>Mon, 16 Jul 2012 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5370                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am currently working on a
5371 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html&quot;&gt;project
5372 to translate&lt;/a&gt; the book
5373 &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free Culture&lt;/a&gt; by Lawrence Lessig
5374 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
5375 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook&quot;&gt;docbook&lt;/a&gt; version, to
5376 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
5377 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
5378 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
5379 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5380
5381 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
5382 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
5383 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
5384 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
5385 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
5386 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
5387 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
5388 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
5389 send pull requests with fixes. :)&lt;/p&gt;
5390 </description>
5391         </item>
5392
5393         <item>
5394                 <title>Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</title>
5395                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html</link>
5396                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html</guid>
5397                 <pubDate>Mon, 9 Jul 2012 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5398                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
5399 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; project have users all over the globe, but until
5400 recently we have not known about any users in Norway&#39;s neighbour
5401 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
5402 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
5403 to adjust and scale the just released
5404 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
5405 Wheezy&lt;/a&gt; setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
5406 happy to share his answers with you here.&lt;/p&gt;
5407
5408 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5409
5410 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
5411 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
5412 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
5413 &quot;folkhighschool&quot; teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
5414 Norwegian I believe it&#39;s called &quot;Vuxenupplaring&quot;. I also have a master
5415 in &quot;Technology and social change&quot;. So I&#39;m not really a tech guy, I
5416 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
5417 perspective when working with IT.&lt;/p&gt;
5418
5419 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5420 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5421
5422 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
5423 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
5424 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
5425 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
5426 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
5427 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
5428
5429 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5430 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5431
5432 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
5433 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
5434 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
5435 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
5436 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
5437 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
5438 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
5439 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
5440 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
5441 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to &quot;beat around the bush&quot; by
5442 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
5443 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
5444 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
5445 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
5446 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
5447 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
5448 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
5449 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
5450 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
5451 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
5452 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
5453 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit &quot;oldish&quot; applications. Debian is
5454 quicker to update.
5455
5456 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5457 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5458
5459 &lt;p&gt;Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
5460 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
5461 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
5462 sound from working with them.  It&#39;s a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
5463 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
5464 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.&lt;/p&gt;
5465
5466 &lt;p&gt;I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
5467 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
5468 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
5469 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
5470 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
5471 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
5472 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
5473 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
5474 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
5475 some applications can&#39;t be open source. As for us we really need to
5476 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
5477 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
5478 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
5479 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
5480 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.&lt;/p&gt;
5481
5482 &lt;p&gt;Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
5483 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
5484 market to Adobe. The only &quot;equivalent&quot; to InDesign in the opensource
5485 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
5486 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
5487 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
5488 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
5489 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.&lt;/p&gt;
5490
5491 &lt;p&gt;We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
5492 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
5493 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
5494 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
5495 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
5496 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
5497 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
5498 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
5499 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
5500 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
5501 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
5502 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
5503 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
5504 sound file.&lt;/p&gt;
5505
5506 &lt;p&gt;So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
5507 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
5508 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
5509 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
5510 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
5511 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
5512 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
5513 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
5514 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.&lt;/p&gt;
5515
5516 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5517
5518 &lt;p&gt;Myself I&#39;m running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
5519 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
5520 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
5521 )&lt;/p&gt;
5522
5523 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5524 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5525
5526 &lt;p&gt;To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
5527 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
5528 it&#39;s also very important that the multimedia support is working
5529 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
5530 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
5531 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
5532 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
5533 idea. It&#39;s also important that the open source software works even for
5534 the administration.  It&#39;s hard to convince the teachers to stick with
5535 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
5536 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
5537 will create a difference in &quot;status&quot; between classes, so a good
5538 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
5539 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
5540 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.&lt;/p&gt;
5541
5542 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
5543 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
5544 article &lt;a href=&quot;https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/&quot;&gt;Radio station
5545 management with Airtime&lt;/a&gt;,
5546 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/&quot;&gt;Airtime&lt;/a&gt; which
5547 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
5548 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rivendellaudio.org/&quot;&gt;Rivendell&lt;/a&gt; which claim to
5549 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
5550 useful to the aspiring radio producer.&lt;/p&gt;
5551 </description>
5552         </item>
5553
5554         <item>
5555                 <title>Why do schools waste money on IT?</title>
5556                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html</link>
5557                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html</guid>
5558                 <pubDate>Sun, 8 Jul 2012 09:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
5559                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
5560 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
5561 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
5562 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
5563 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
5564 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
5565 Steinberg in his blog post
5566 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/&quot;&gt;Can
5567 you recognize the million pound chair?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  Read it and weep for the
5568 spending of your tax money.&lt;/p&gt;
5569
5570 &lt;p&gt;Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
5571 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
5572 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
5573 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
5574 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
5575 purchases.&lt;/p&gt;
5576 </description>
5577         </item>
5578
5579         <item>
5580                 <title>Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</title>
5581                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</link>
5582                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</guid>
5583                 <pubDate>Sat, 7 Jul 2012 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
5584                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Included in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
5585 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is a large collection of end user and school specific
5586 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
5587 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
5588 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
5589 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
5590 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
5591 receive.  The software is
5592
5593 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/&quot;&gt;named FET&lt;/a&gt;, and it provide a
5594 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
5595 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
5596 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
5597 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html&quot;&gt;Linux, MacOSX and
5598 Windows&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5599
5600 &lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html&quot;&gt;the
5601 feature list&lt;/a&gt;, liftet from the project web site:&lt;/p&gt;
5602
5603 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
5604
5605   &lt;li&gt;FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
5606     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it &lt;/li&gt;
5607
5608   &lt;li&gt;Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
5609     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
5610     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
5611     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
5612     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
5613     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
5614     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
5615     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
5616     &lt;/li&gt;
5617
5618   &lt;li&gt;Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
5619     semi-automatic or manual allocation&lt;/li&gt;
5620
5621   &lt;li&gt;Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
5622     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports &lt;/li&gt;
5623
5624   &lt;li&gt;Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
5625     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)&lt;/li&gt;
5626
5627   &lt;li&gt;Import/export from CSV format&lt;/li&gt;
5628
5629   &lt;li&gt;The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
5630     formats &lt;/li&gt;
5631
5632   &lt;li&gt;Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
5633     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
5634     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
5635     (as separate sets)&lt;/li&gt;
5636
5637   &lt;li&gt;Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
5638     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
5639     percentage)&lt;/li&gt;
5640
5641   &lt;li&gt;Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
5642     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
5643     memory):
5644     &lt;ul&gt;
5645       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60&lt;/li&gt;
5646       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of working days per week: 35&lt;/li&gt;
5647       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of teachers: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
5648       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000&lt;/li&gt;
5649       &lt;li&gt;Maximum total number of subjects: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
5650       &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of activity tags&lt;/li&gt;
5651       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of activities: 30000&lt;/li&gt;
5652       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of rooms: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
5653       &lt;li&gt;Maximum number of buildings: 6000&lt;/li&gt;
5654       &lt;li&gt;Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
5655           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
5656           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
5657           activity)&lt;/li&gt;
5658       &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of time constraints&lt;/li&gt;
5659       &lt;li&gt;Virtually unlimited number of space constraints&lt;/li&gt;
5660     &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
5661
5662   &lt;li&gt;A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
5663     &lt;ul&gt;
5664       &lt;li&gt;Break periods&lt;/li&gt;
5665       &lt;li&gt;For teacher(s):
5666         &lt;ul&gt;
5667           &lt;li&gt;Not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
5668           &lt;li&gt;Max/min days per week&lt;/li&gt;
5669           &lt;li&gt;Max gaps per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
5670           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously&lt;/li&gt;
5671           &lt;li&gt;Min hours daily&lt;/li&gt;
5672           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
5673
5674           &lt;li&gt;Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
5675             days per week&lt;/li&gt;
5676         &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
5677       &lt;li&gt;For students (sets):
5678         &lt;ul&gt;
5679           &lt;li&gt;Not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
5680           &lt;li&gt;Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)&lt;/li&gt;
5681           &lt;li&gt;Max gaps per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
5682           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously&lt;/li&gt;
5683           &lt;li&gt;Min hours daily&lt;/li&gt;
5684           &lt;li&gt;Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
5685
5686           &lt;li&gt;Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
5687             days per week&lt;/li&gt;
5688         &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
5689       &lt;li&gt;For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
5690         &lt;ul&gt;
5691           &lt;li&gt;A single preferred starting time&lt;/li&gt;
5692           &lt;li&gt;A set of preferred starting times&lt;/li&gt;
5693           &lt;li&gt;A set of preferred time slots&lt;/li&gt;
5694           &lt;li&gt;Min/max days between them&lt;/li&gt;
5695           &lt;li&gt;End(s) students day&lt;/li&gt;
5696           &lt;li&gt;Same starting time/day/hour&lt;/li&gt;
5697           &lt;li&gt;Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
5698             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)&lt;/li&gt;
5699           &lt;li&gt;Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)&lt;/li&gt;
5700           &lt;li&gt;Not overlapping&lt;/li&gt;
5701           &lt;li&gt;Max simultaneous in selected time slots&lt;/li&gt;
5702           &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities&lt;/li&gt;
5703         &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
5704     &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
5705
5706   &lt;li&gt;A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
5707     &lt;ul&gt;
5708       &lt;li&gt;Room not available periods&lt;/li&gt;
5709       &lt;li&gt;For teacher(s):
5710         &lt;ul&gt;
5711           &lt;li&gt;Home room(s)&lt;/li&gt;
5712           &lt;li&gt;Max building changes per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
5713           &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between building changes&lt;/li&gt;
5714         &lt;/ul&gt;
5715       &lt;/li&gt;
5716
5717       &lt;li&gt;For students (sets):
5718         &lt;ul&gt;
5719           &lt;li&gt;Home room(s)&lt;/li&gt;
5720           &lt;li&gt;Max building changes per day/week&lt;/li&gt;
5721           &lt;li&gt;Min gaps between building changes&lt;/li&gt;
5722         &lt;/ul&gt;
5723       &lt;/li&gt;
5724       &lt;li&gt;Preferred room(s):
5725         &lt;ul&gt;
5726           &lt;li&gt;For a subject&lt;/li&gt;
5727           &lt;li&gt;For an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
5728           &lt;li&gt;For a subject and an activity tag&lt;/li&gt;
5729           &lt;li&gt;Individually for a (sub)activity&lt;/li&gt;
5730         &lt;/ul&gt;
5731       &lt;/li&gt;
5732
5733       &lt;li&gt;For a set of activities:
5734         &lt;ul&gt;
5735           &lt;li&gt;Occupy a maximum number of different rooms&lt;/li&gt;
5736         &lt;/ul&gt;
5737       &lt;/li&gt;
5738     &lt;/ul&gt;
5739   &lt;/li&gt;
5740 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5741
5742 &lt;p&gt;I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
5743 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
5744 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
5745 manually, check it out.
5746
5747 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
5748 &lt;a href=&quot;http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/&quot;&gt;a
5749 blog post from MarvelSoft&lt;/a&gt;.  If you find FET useful, please provide
5750 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
5751 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos&quot;&gt;Debian Edu HowTo
5752 section&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5753 </description>
5754         </item>
5755
5756         <item>
5757                 <title>Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</title>
5758                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html</link>
5759                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html</guid>
5760                 <pubDate>Tue, 3 Jul 2012 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5761                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the NUUG &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt;
5762 project (Norwegian version of
5763 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com/&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; from
5764 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/&quot;&gt;mySociety&lt;/a&gt;), we have discovered
5765 a problem with the municipalities using
5766 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zimbra.com/&quot;&gt;Zimbra&lt;/a&gt;.  When FiksGataMi send a
5767 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
5768 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
5769 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
5770 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
5771 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
5772 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
5773 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
5774 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
5775 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
5776 the From: header.&lt;/p&gt;
5777
5778 &lt;p&gt;This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
5779 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
5780 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
5781 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
5782 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
5783 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
5784 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
5785 behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;
5786
5787 &lt;p&gt;The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
5788 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
5789 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
5790 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
5791 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
5792 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami&quot;&gt;fiksgatami
5793 (at) nuug.no&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5794 </description>
5795         </item>
5796
5797         <item>
5798                 <title>Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</title>
5799                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html</link>
5800                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html</guid>
5801                 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jun 2012 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5802                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
5803 another interview with the people behind
5804 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.
5805 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
5806 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
5807 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
5808 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
5809 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
5810 Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version.&lt;/p&gt;
5811
5812 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5813
5814 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
5815 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
5816 ICT in schools&lt;/p&gt;
5817
5818 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
5819 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5820
5821 &lt;p&gt;At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
5822 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
5823 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
5824 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.&lt;/p&gt;
5825
5826 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5827 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5828
5829 &lt;p&gt;A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
5830 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
5831 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
5832 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
5833
5834 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5835 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5836
5837 &lt;p&gt;Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
5838 economical and technical resources in the different countries don&#39;t
5839 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
5840 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
5841 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
5842 technologies in school.&lt;/p&gt;
5843
5844 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5845
5846 &lt;p&gt;Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
5847 between Iceweasel, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geany.org/&quot;&gt;Geany&lt;/a&gt; and
5848 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator&quot;&gt;Terminator&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
5849
5850 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5851 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
5852
5853 &lt;p&gt;I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
5854 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
5855 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
5856 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.&lt;/p&gt;
5857
5858 &lt;p&gt;Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
5859 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
5860 universities. So different strategies are needed.&lt;/p&gt;
5861
5862 &lt;p&gt;But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
5863 we&#39;ve done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
5864 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
5865 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
5866 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
5867 using wireless. I think we&#39;ll see more and more personal devices in
5868 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
5869 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
5870 working there.&lt;/p&gt;
5871 </description>
5872         </item>
5873
5874         <item>
5875                 <title>Song book for Computer Scientists</title>
5876                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</link>
5877                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html</guid>
5878                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5879                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
5880 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uit.no/&quot;&gt;University of Tromsø&lt;/a&gt;, I started
5881 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
5882 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
5883 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
5884 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
5885 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
5886 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
5887 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
5888 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
5889 missing in my book.&lt;/p&gt;
5890
5891 &lt;p&gt;I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
5892 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
5893 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
5894 Especially now that &lt;a href=&quot;http://debconf12.debconf.org/&quot;&gt;Debconf
5895 12&lt;/a&gt; is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
5896 out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/&quot;&gt;Petter&#39;s
5897 Computer Science Songbook&lt;/a&gt;.
5898 </description>
5899         </item>
5900
5901         <item>
5902                 <title>Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</title>
5903                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html</link>
5904                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html</guid>
5905                 <pubDate>Mon, 11 Jun 2012 14:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
5906                 <description>&lt;p&gt;During my work on
5907 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
5908 based on Squeeze&lt;/a&gt;, I came across some issues that should be
5909 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
5910 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
5911 explanation.&lt;/p&gt;
5912
5913 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
5914
5915 &lt;li&gt;We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
5916 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
5917 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
5918 system depend on tasksel tasks in
5919 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
5920 installation.&lt;/li&gt;
5921
5922 &lt;li&gt;Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
5923 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
5924 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
5925 at least try to enable it for these services:
5926 &lt;ul&gt;
5927
5928   &lt;li&gt;CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
5929     quotas.&lt;/li&gt;
5930   &lt;li&gt;Nagios for admins checking the system status.&lt;/li&gt;
5931   &lt;li&gt;GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.&lt;/li&gt;
5932   &lt;li&gt;LDAP for admins updating LDAP.&lt;/li&gt;
5933   &lt;li&gt;Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.&lt;/li&gt;
5934   &lt;li&gt;ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.&lt;/li&gt;
5935
5936 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
5937
5938 &lt;li&gt;When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
5939 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
5940 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
5941 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind&lt;/li&gt;
5942
5943 &lt;li&gt;Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
5944 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
5945 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.&lt;/li&gt;
5946
5947 &lt;li&gt;Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
5948 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
5949 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/653305&quot;&gt;BTS report #653305&lt;/a&gt; and the
5950 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
5951 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
5952 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.&lt;/li&gt;
5953
5954 &lt;li&gt;Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
5955 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
5956 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
5957 in Wheezy.
5958
5959 &lt;li&gt;Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
5960 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
5961 up KDE login on slow networks.&lt;/li&gt;
5962
5963 &lt;li&gt;Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
5964 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
5965 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
5966 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.&lt;/li&gt;
5967
5968 &lt;li&gt;Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
5969 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
5970 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
5971 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..&lt;/li&gt;
5972
5973 &lt;li&gt;We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
5974 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
5975 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.&lt;/li&gt;
5976
5977 &lt;li&gt;We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
5978 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
5979 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.&lt;/li&gt;
5980
5981 &lt;li&gt;We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
5982 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
5983 requested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/588968&quot;&gt;BTS report
5984 #588968&lt;/a&gt; and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
5985 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.&lt;/li&gt;
5986
5987 &lt;li&gt;We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
5988 &lt;ul&gt;
5989
5990 &lt;li&gt;reduce the number of chemistry visualisers&lt;/li&gt;
5991 &lt;li&gt;consider dropping xpaint&lt;/li&gt;
5992 &lt;li&gt;and probably more?&lt;/li&gt;
5993 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
5994
5995 &lt;li&gt;Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
5996 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
5997 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
5998 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
5999 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
6000 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
6001 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
6002 for the LTSP chroot).&lt;/li&gt;
6003
6004
6005 &lt;li&gt;In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
6006 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
6007 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
6008 use.&lt;/li&gt;
6009
6010 &lt;li&gt;The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
6011 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
6012 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
6013 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
6014 new applications with a simple mouse click.&lt;/li&gt;
6015
6016 &lt;li&gt;The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
6017 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
6018 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
6019 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
6020 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
6021 instead of the &quot;it is documented&quot; method of today.&lt;/li&gt;
6022
6023 &lt;li&gt;A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
6024 &quot;take over&quot; the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
6025 There are at least three implementations,
6026 &lt;a href=&quot;italc.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;italc&lt;/a&gt;,
6027 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itais.net/help/en/&quot;&gt;controlaula&lt;/a&gt; og
6028 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epoptes.org/&quot;&gt;epoptes&lt;/a&gt; and we should pick one of
6029 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
6030 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
6031 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
6032 given room.&lt;/li&gt;
6033
6034 &lt;li&gt;Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
6035 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
6036 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
6037 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
6038 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
6039 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
6040 investigated.&lt;/li&gt;
6041
6042 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6043
6044 &lt;p&gt;I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
6045 version.&lt;/p&gt;
6046 </description>
6047         </item>
6048
6049         <item>
6050                 <title>TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</title>
6051                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html</link>
6052                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html</guid>
6053                 <pubDate>Sat, 9 Jun 2012 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6054                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
6055 &lt;a href=&quot;http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year&quot;&gt;TV
6056 with face recognition&lt;/a&gt; to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
6057 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
6058 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
6059 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
6060 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
6061 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
6062 be willing to pay for.&lt;/p&gt;
6063
6064 &lt;p&gt;I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
6065 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
6066 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
6067 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt&quot;&gt;1984 by George
6068 Orwell&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
6069 </description>
6070         </item>
6071
6072         <item>
6073                 <title>Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</title>
6074                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html</link>
6075                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html</guid>
6076                 <pubDate>Wed, 6 Jun 2012 23:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
6077                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago
6078 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html&quot;&gt;I
6079 reported how to get&lt;/a&gt; the support status out of Dell using an
6080 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
6081 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html&quot;&gt;discovered
6082 by Daniel De Marco in february&lt;/a&gt;.  Combined with my web scraping
6083 code for HP, Dell and IBM
6084 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html&quot;&gt;from
6085 2009&lt;/a&gt;, I got inspired and wrote
6086 &lt;a href=&quot;https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/&quot;&gt;a
6087 web service&lt;/a&gt; based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
6088 support status and get a machine readable result back.&lt;/p&gt;
6089
6090 &lt;p&gt;This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
6091 output:
6092
6093 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6094 % GET &lt;a href=&quot;https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&amp;vendor=Dell&amp;servicetag=2v1xwn1&quot;&gt;https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&amp;vendor=Dell&amp;servicetag=2v1xwn1&lt;/a&gt;
6095 supportstatus({&quot;servicetag&quot;: &quot;2v1xwn1&quot;, &quot;warrantyend&quot;: &quot;2013-11-24&quot;, &quot;shipped&quot;: &quot;2010-11-24&quot;, &quot;scrapestamputc&quot;: &quot;2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847&quot;, &quot;scrapedurl&quot;: &quot;http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL&quot;, &quot;vendor&quot;: &quot;Dell&quot;, &quot;productid&quot;: &quot;&quot;})
6096 %
6097 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
6098
6099 &lt;p&gt;It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
6100 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
6101 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.&lt;/p&gt;
6102 </description>
6103         </item>
6104
6105         <item>
6106                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</title>
6107                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html</link>
6108                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html</guid>
6109                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 Jun 2012 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6110                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
6111 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
6112 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
6113 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
6114 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
6115 Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version.&lt;/p&gt;
6116
6117 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6118
6119 &lt;p&gt;My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
6120 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
6121 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
6122 by Angela).&lt;/p&gt;
6123
6124 &lt;p&gt;During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
6125 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
6126 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
6127 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
6128 becoming an osteopath.&lt;/p&gt;
6129
6130 &lt;p&gt;Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
6131 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
6132 introducing free software into schools. The project&#39;s name is
6133 &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot; (IT future for schools). The project links IT
6134 skills with communication skills.&lt;/p&gt;
6135
6136 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6137 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6138
6139 &lt;p&gt;While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
6140 &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot; we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
6141 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
6142 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
6143 distributions that target being used for school networks.&lt;/p&gt;
6144
6145 &lt;p&gt;At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
6146 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
6147 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
6148 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
6149 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
6150 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
6151 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
6152 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
6153 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.&lt;/p&gt;
6154
6155 &lt;p&gt;In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
6156 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
6157 protection experts, other IT professionals.&lt;/p&gt;
6158
6159 &lt;p&gt;We came to two conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;
6160
6161 &lt;p&gt;First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
6162 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
6163 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
6164 whereas most of each school&#39;s requirements could mapped by a standard
6165 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
6166 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
6167 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
6168 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
6169 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
6170 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
6171 point.&lt;/p&gt;
6172
6173 &lt;p&gt;Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
6174 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
6175 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
6176 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
6177 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. &quot;IT-Zukunft Schule&quot;
6178 tries to provide an approach for this.&lt;/p&gt;
6179
6180 &lt;p&gt;Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
6181 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
6182 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school&#39;s IT
6183 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
6184 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
6185 spare time.&lt;/p&gt;
6186
6187 &lt;p&gt;We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
6188 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
6189 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
6190 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
6191 non-existent until 2010/2011.&lt;/p&gt;
6192
6193 &lt;p&gt;Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
6194 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
6195 avoidance do exist.&lt;/p&gt;
6196
6197 &lt;p&gt;We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
6198 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
6199 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
6200 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
6201 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
6202 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
6203 and probably a gain for all.&lt;/p&gt;
6204
6205 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6206 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6207
6208 &lt;p&gt;There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
6209 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
6210 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
6211 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
6212 project communication, honest communication within the group of
6213 developers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;
6214
6215 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6216 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6217
6218 &lt;p&gt;Every coin has two sides:&lt;/p&gt;
6219
6220 &lt;p&gt;Technically: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/311188&quot;&gt;BTS issue
6221 #311188&lt;/a&gt;, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
6222 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
6223 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
6224 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
6225 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
6226 contribute).&lt;/p&gt;
6227
6228 &lt;p&gt;Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
6229 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
6230 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
6231 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
6232 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
6233 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
6234 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
6235 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
6236 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
6237 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
6238
6239 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6240
6241 &lt;p&gt;For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.&lt;/p&gt;
6242
6243 &lt;p&gt;For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
6244 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
6245 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.&lt;/p&gt;
6246
6247 &lt;p&gt;I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
6248 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
6249 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
6250 is being integrated in Ubuntu&#39;s software center.&lt;/p&gt;
6251
6252 &lt;p&gt;For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
6253 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
6254 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
6255 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
6256 whiteboard.&lt;/p&gt;
6257
6258 &lt;p&gt;My favourite terminal emulator is KDE&#39;s Yakuake.&lt;/p&gt;
6259
6260 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6261 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6262
6263 &lt;p&gt;Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
6264 enrol people.&lt;/p&gt;
6265 </description>
6266         </item>
6267
6268         <item>
6269                 <title>SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</title>
6270                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html</link>
6271                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html</guid>
6272                 <pubDate>Fri, 1 Jun 2012 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
6273                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few years ago I wrote
6274 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html&quot;&gt;how
6275 to extract support status&lt;/a&gt; for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
6276 I have learned from colleges here at the
6277 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt; that Dell have
6278 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
6279 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
6280 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
6281 demonstrate how to do it:&lt;/p&gt;
6282
6283 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6284 use strict;
6285 use warnings;
6286 use SOAP::Lite;
6287 use Data::Dumper;
6288 my $GUID = &#39;11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111&#39;;
6289 my $App = &#39;test&#39;;
6290 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die &quot;Please supply a servicetag. $!\n&quot;;
6291 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
6292 my $s = SOAP::Lite
6293     -&gt; uri(&#39;http://support.dell.com/WebServices/&#39;)
6294     -&gt; on_action( sub { join &#39;&#39;, @_ } )
6295     -&gt; proxy(&#39;http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx&#39;)
6296     ;
6297 my $a = $s-&gt;GetAssetInformation(
6298     SOAP::Data-&gt;name(&#39;guid&#39;)-&gt;value($GUID)-&gt;type(&#39;&#39;),
6299     SOAP::Data-&gt;name(&#39;applicationName&#39;)-&gt;value($App)-&gt;type(&#39;&#39;),
6300     SOAP::Data-&gt;name(&#39;serviceTags&#39;)-&gt;value($servicetag)-&gt;type(&#39;&#39;),
6301 );
6302 print Dumper($a -&gt; result) ;
6303 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6304
6305 &lt;p&gt;The output can look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
6306
6307 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6308 $VAR1 = {
6309           &#39;Asset&#39; =&gt; {
6310                      &#39;Entitlements&#39; =&gt; {
6311                                        &#39;EntitlementData&#39; =&gt; [
6312                                                             {
6313                                                               &#39;EntitlementType&#39; =&gt; &#39;Expired&#39;,
6314                                                               &#39;EndDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2009-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
6315                                                               &#39;Provider&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
6316                                                               &#39;StartDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
6317                                                               &#39;DaysLeft&#39; =&gt; &#39;0&#39;
6318                                                             },
6319                                                             {
6320                                                               &#39;EntitlementType&#39; =&gt; &#39;Expired&#39;,
6321                                                               &#39;EndDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2009-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
6322                                                               &#39;Provider&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
6323                                                               &#39;StartDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
6324                                                               &#39;DaysLeft&#39; =&gt; &#39;0&#39;
6325                                                             },
6326                                                             {
6327                                                               &#39;EntitlementType&#39; =&gt; &#39;Expired&#39;,
6328                                                               &#39;EndDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2007-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
6329                                                               &#39;Provider&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
6330                                                               &#39;StartDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T00:00:00&#39;,
6331                                                               &#39;DaysLeft&#39; =&gt; &#39;0&#39;
6332                                                             }
6333                                                           ]
6334                                      },
6335                      &#39;AssetHeaderData&#39; =&gt; {
6336                                           &#39;SystemModel&#39; =&gt; &#39;GX620&#39;,
6337                                           &#39;ServiceTag&#39; =&gt; &#39;8DSGD2J&#39;,
6338                                           &#39;SystemShipDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00&#39;,
6339                                           &#39;Buid&#39; =&gt; &#39;2323&#39;,
6340                                           &#39;Region&#39; =&gt; &#39;Europe&#39;,
6341                                           &#39;SystemID&#39; =&gt; &#39;PLX_GX620&#39;,
6342                                           &#39;SystemType&#39; =&gt; &#39;OptiPlex&#39;
6343                                         }
6344                    }
6345         };
6346 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6347
6348 &lt;p&gt;I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
6349 service outside the
6350 &lt;a href=&quot;http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation&quot;&gt;inline
6351 documentation&lt;/a&gt;, and according to
6352 &lt;a href=&quot;http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/&quot;&gt;one
6353 comment&lt;/a&gt; it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
6354 scraping HTML pages. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6355
6356 &lt;p&gt;Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
6357 you know of one, drop me an email. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6358 </description>
6359         </item>
6360
6361         <item>
6362                 <title>First monitor calibration using ColorHug</title>
6363                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html</link>
6364                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html</guid>
6365                 <pubDate>Thu, 31 May 2012 22:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
6366                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago my color calibration gadget
6367 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hughski.com/index.html&quot;&gt;ColorHug&lt;/a&gt; arrived in the
6368 mail, and I&#39;ve had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
6369 running Debian Squeeze, where
6370 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html&quot;&gt;the
6371 calibration software&lt;/a&gt; is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
6372 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
6373 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
6374 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
6375 another day.&lt;/p&gt;
6376
6377 &lt;p&gt;After calibration, I get a
6378 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile&quot;&gt;ICC color
6379 profile&lt;/a&gt; file that can be passed to programs understanding such
6380 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
6381 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
6382 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
6383 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
6384 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
6385 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
6386 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896&quot;&gt;discovered&lt;/a&gt;
6387 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
6388 and a simple&lt;/p&gt;
6389
6390 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
6391 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
6392 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6393
6394 &lt;p&gt;later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
6395 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
6396 wrong monitor type for the &quot;led&quot; monitor I got, but the result is good
6397 enough for now.&lt;/p&gt;
6398 </description>
6399         </item>
6400
6401         <item>
6402                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</title>
6403                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html</link>
6404                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html</guid>
6405                 <pubDate>Sun, 27 May 2012 17:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
6406                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
6407 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
6408 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
6409 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
6410 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
6411 since then, helping to make sure the
6412 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
6413 Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; release became as good as it is..&lt;/p&gt;
6414
6415 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6416
6417 &lt;p&gt;I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
6418 Mathematics, and Computer Science (&quot;Informatik&quot;). During the past 12
6419 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
6420 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
6421 O- or A-level (&quot;Abitur&quot;).  For quite as long, I&#39;ve been taking care of
6422 our computer network.&lt;/p&gt;
6423
6424 &lt;p&gt;Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
6425 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
6426 (4 months).&lt;/p&gt;
6427
6428 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6429 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6430
6431 &lt;p&gt;We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
6432 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
6433 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
6434 (&quot;Best Newcomer Distribution&quot;, also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
6435 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
6436 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
6437 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
6438 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
6439 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
6440 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
6441 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
6442 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
6443 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
6444 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
6445
6446 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6447 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6448
6449 &lt;p&gt;Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
6450 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
6451 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
6452 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
6453 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
6454 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
6455 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
6456 administration costs tend towards zero.&lt;/p&gt;
6457
6458 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6459 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6460
6461 &lt;p&gt;While Debian&#39;s stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
6462 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
6463 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
6464 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
6465 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
6466 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
6467 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
6468 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
6469 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
6470 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
6471 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
6472 i.e. harder to understand for novices.&lt;/p&gt;
6473
6474 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6475
6476 &lt;p&gt;LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
6477 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
6478 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)&lt;/p&gt;
6479
6480 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6481 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6482
6483 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ol&gt;
6484
6485 &lt;li&gt;Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
6486 people really &quot;own&quot; their hardware, to make them understand the
6487 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
6488 developing.&lt;/li&gt;
6489
6490 &lt;li&gt;Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany&#39;s public schools
6491 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
6492 licenses), so schools won&#39;t benefit from any savings here. This
6493 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
6494 share among German Skolelinux schools.&lt;/li&gt;
6495
6496 &lt;li&gt;Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
6497 trained. In many cases, teachers&#39; software customs are respected by
6498 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.&lt;/li&gt;
6499
6500 &lt;li&gt;Don&#39;t limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
6501 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
6502 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
6503 shared world wide (school books e.g.).&lt;/li&gt;
6504
6505 &lt;li&gt;Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
6506 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don&#39;t
6507 need to know the &quot;ribbon menu&quot; in order to get employed.&lt;/li&gt;
6508
6509 &lt;li&gt;Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.&lt;/li&gt;
6510
6511 &lt;li&gt;Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
6512 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
6513 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
6514 keep sending documents in ODF formats.&lt;/li&gt;
6515
6516 &lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6517 </description>
6518         </item>
6519
6520         <item>
6521                 <title>The cost of ODF and OOXML</title>
6522                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html</link>
6523                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html</guid>
6524                 <pubDate>Sat, 26 May 2012 18:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6525                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
6526 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
6527 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
6528 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
6529 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;
6530
6531 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hi.  I just noted your
6532 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm&quot;&gt;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;
6533 comment:&lt;/p&gt;
6534
6535 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;They&#39;re all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
6536 with the help of Google Translate I can&#39;t find any figures about the
6537 savings of &quot;moving to a flexible two standard&quot; as claimed by the
6538 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let&#39;s take
6539 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust.&quot;
6540 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6541
6542 &lt;p&gt;I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
6543 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
6544 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
6545 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
6546 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
6547 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
6548 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
6549 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
6550 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
6551 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
6552 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
6553 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
6554 of wasted effort.&lt;/p&gt;
6555
6556 &lt;p&gt;Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
6557 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
6558 minutes converting to ODF. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6559
6560 &lt;p&gt;See
6561 &lt;a href=&quot;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php&quot;&gt;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php&lt;/a&gt;
6562 and
6563 &lt;a href=&quot;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php&quot;&gt;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php&lt;/a&gt;
6564 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6565 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6566 </description>
6567         </item>
6568
6569         <item>
6570                 <title>ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</title>
6571                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html</link>
6572                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html</guid>
6573                 <pubDate>Fri, 18 May 2012 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
6574                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In january, I
6575 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/&quot;&gt;discovered
6576 the ColorHug&lt;/a&gt;, a USB dongle from
6577 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hughski.com/index.html&quot;&gt;Hughski&lt;/a&gt; to calibrate
6578 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
6579 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html&quot;&gt;included
6580 in Debian&lt;/a&gt;, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
6581 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
6582 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
6583 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
6584 should go in the mail on monday. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6585
6586 &lt;p&gt;If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
6587 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
6588 drivers. :)&lt;/p&gt;
6589 </description>
6590         </item>
6591
6592         <item>
6593                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</title>
6594                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html</link>
6595                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html</guid>
6596                 <pubDate>Sun, 13 May 2012 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
6597                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
6598 publish another interview with the people behind
6599 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.
6600 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
6601 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
6602 details get right before release.
6603
6604 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6605
6606 &lt;p&gt;My name is Jürgen Leibner, I&#39;m 49 years old and living in
6607 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
6608 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
6609 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I&#39;m a
6610 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
6611 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
6612 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
6613 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.&lt;/p&gt;
6614
6615 &lt;p&gt;My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
6616 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
6617 home since 2006.&lt;/p&gt;
6618
6619 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6620 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6621
6622 &lt;p&gt;Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
6623 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
6624 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
6625 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
6626 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
6627 computers in use. I answered: &quot;Yes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
6628
6629 &lt;p&gt;Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
6630 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
6631 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
6632 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
6633 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
6634 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
6635 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
6636 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
6637 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
6638 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
6639 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
6640 people nearby who founded &#39;skolelinux.de&#39;. It was the Skolelinux
6641 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
6642 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
6643 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
6644 Bielefeld in December of 2006.&lt;/p&gt;
6645
6646 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6647 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6648
6649 &lt;p&gt;When I&#39;m looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
6650 for me as today.&lt;/p&gt;
6651
6652 &lt;p&gt;In the past there were advantages like:&lt;/p&gt;
6653
6654 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
6655
6656 &lt;li&gt;I don&#39;t need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
6657 they had little money to spent for computers and software.&lt;/li&gt;
6658
6659 &lt;li&gt;It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
6660 cost.&lt;/li&gt;
6661
6662 &lt;li&gt;It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
6663 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
6664 clients because of it&#39;s preconfigured overall concept of being a
6665 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
6666 server&lt;/li&gt;
6667
6668 &lt;li&gt;I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
6669 school.&lt;/li&gt;
6670
6671 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6672
6673 &lt;p&gt;Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
6674 came up in this way:&lt;/p&gt;
6675
6676 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
6677
6678 &lt;li&gt;Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
6679 now.&lt;/li&gt;
6680
6681 &lt;li&gt;They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
6682 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
6683 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.&lt;/li&gt;
6684
6685 &lt;li&gt;With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
6686 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
6687 interfaces used in the past.&lt;/li&gt;
6688
6689 &lt;li&gt;It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
6690 different needs.&lt;/li&gt;
6691
6692 &lt;li&gt;The documentation is usable and gets better every day.&lt;/li&gt;
6693
6694 &lt;li&gt;More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
6695 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
6696 is sharing knowledge and minds.&lt;/li&gt;
6697
6698 &lt;li&gt;Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
6699 solved today by Debian Edu. &lt;/li&gt;
6700
6701 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6702
6703 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6704 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6705
6706 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
6707
6708 &lt;li&gt;There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
6709 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
6710 whole municipality areas.&lt;/li&gt;
6711
6712 &lt;li&gt;Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
6713 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
6714 politicians.&lt;/li&gt;
6715
6716 &lt;li&gt;Technically there are no disadvantages I&#39;m aware of.&lt;/li&gt;
6717
6718 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6719
6720 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6721
6722 &lt;p&gt;I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
6723 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
6724 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
6725 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
6726 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
6727 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.&lt;/p&gt;
6728
6729 &lt;p&gt;My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
6730 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
6731 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
6732 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
6733 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.&lt;/p&gt;
6734
6735 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6736 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6737
6738 &lt;p&gt;I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
6739 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
6740 countries and areas all over the world.&lt;/p&gt;
6741 </description>
6742         </item>
6743
6744         <item>
6745                 <title>Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</title>
6746                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html</link>
6747                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html</guid>
6748                 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
6749                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- IMG_5869.JPG --&gt;
6750 &lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6751
6752 &lt;p&gt;I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
6753 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
6754 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
6755 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
6756 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
6757 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
6758 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
6759 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
6760 are not marketed and sold to &quot;regular consumers&quot;.  The hair saloons
6761 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
6762 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
6763 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
6764 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
6765 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
6766 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
6767 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.&lt;/p&gt;
6768
6769 &lt;p&gt;The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
6770 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
6771 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
6772 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
6773 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
6774 finally found a Danish supplier
6775 &lt;a href=&quot;http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html&quot;&gt;selling
6776 it for around NOK 1800,-&lt;/a&gt;.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
6777 days ago.&lt;/p&gt;
6778
6779 &lt;p&gt;The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
6780 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
6781 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
6782 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
6783 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
6784 toys.&lt;/p&gt;
6785 </description>
6786         </item>
6787
6788         <item>
6789                 <title>HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</title>
6790                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html</link>
6791                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html</guid>
6792                 <pubDate>Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
6793                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece&quot;&gt;an
6794 article today&lt;/a&gt; published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
6795 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urke.com/eirik/&quot;&gt;Eirik Helland Urke&lt;/a&gt; reports
6796 that the video editor application included with
6797 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs&quot;&gt;HTC One
6798 X&lt;/a&gt; have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
6799 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
6800
6801 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
6802 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280&quot;&gt;Drøy
6803 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
6804 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;
6805 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6806
6807 &lt;p&gt;I quickly translated it to this English message:&lt;/p&gt;
6808
6809 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
6810 &quot;Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
6811 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately.&quot;
6812 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6813
6814 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
6815 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
6816 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html&quot;&gt;discovered
6817 with my Canon IXUS 130&lt;/a&gt;.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
6818 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
6819 video.  AMR is
6820 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues&quot;&gt;Adaptive
6821 Multi-Rate audio codec&lt;/a&gt; with patents which according to the
6822 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
6823 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.voiceage.com/&quot;&gt;VoiceAge&lt;/a&gt;.  MP4 is
6824 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing&quot;&gt;MPEG4 with
6825 H.264&lt;/a&gt;, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
6826 with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpegla.com/&quot;&gt;MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
6827
6828 &lt;p&gt;I know why I prefer
6829 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and open
6830 standards&lt;/a&gt; also for video.&lt;/p&gt;
6831 </description>
6832         </item>
6833
6834         <item>
6835                 <title>RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</title>
6836                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html</link>
6837                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html</guid>
6838                 <pubDate>Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
6839                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway, the
6840 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339&quot;&gt; Ministry of
6841 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs&lt;/a&gt; is behind
6842 a &lt;a href=&quot;http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder&quot;&gt;directory of
6843 standards&lt;/a&gt; that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
6844 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
6845 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
6846 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
6847 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
6848 on the same level.&lt;/p&gt;
6849
6850 &lt;p&gt;But recently, some standards with RAND
6851 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing&quot;&gt;Reasonable
6852 And Non-Discriminatory&lt;/a&gt;) terms have made their way into the
6853 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
6854 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
6855 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
6856 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
6857 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
6858 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
6859 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
6860 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
6861 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
6862 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
6863 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
6864 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
6865 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
6866 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
6867 implementing standards with RAND terms.&lt;/p&gt;
6868
6869 &lt;p&gt;Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
6870 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
6871 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
6872 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
6873 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
6874 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
6875 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
6876 attention to these issues in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
6877
6878 &lt;p&gt;You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
6879 from Simon Phipps
6880 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/&quot;&gt;RAND:
6881 Not So Reasonable?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
6882
6883 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
6884 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm&quot;&gt;blog
6885 post from Glyn Moody&lt;/a&gt; over at Computer World UK warning about the
6886 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
6887 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
6888 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder&quot;&gt;the
6889 hearing taking place at the moment&lt;/a&gt; (respond before 2012-04-27).
6890 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
6891 specifications with RAND terms.&lt;/p&gt;
6892 </description>
6893         </item>
6894
6895         <item>
6896                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</title>
6897                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html</link>
6898                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html</guid>
6899                 <pubDate>Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
6900                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Behind &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and
6901 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
6902 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
6903 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
6904 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
6905 up in the recently released
6906 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze&quot;&gt;Debian
6907 Edu Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version.&lt;/p&gt;
6908
6909 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6910
6911 &lt;p&gt;My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
6912 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
6913 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
6914 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
6915 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
6916 information technology and science/technology.&lt;/p&gt;
6917
6918 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6919 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6920
6921 &lt;p&gt;Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
6922 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
6923 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
6924 contributing.&lt;/p&gt;
6925
6926 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6927 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6928
6929 &lt;p&gt;The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
6930 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
6931 Debian Project!&lt;/p&gt;
6932
6933 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6934 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6935
6936 &lt;p&gt;As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
6937 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
6938 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
6939 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
6940 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
6941 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
6942 rather small and often busy elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;
6943
6944 &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN&quot;&gt;Debian LAN&lt;/a&gt;
6945 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.&lt;/p&gt;
6946
6947 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6948
6949 &lt;p&gt;I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
6950 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
6951 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
6952 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.&lt;/p&gt;
6953
6954 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6955 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6956
6957 &lt;p&gt;One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
6958 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
6959 politicians, this works out great for the &quot;market-leader&quot;.  The school
6960 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
6961 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
6962 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
6963 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.&lt;/p&gt;
6964
6965 &lt;p&gt;To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
6966 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
6967 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to &#39;free&#39;
6968 the system.  There is currently some discussion about &quot;Open Data&quot; and
6969 &quot;Free/Open Standards&quot;.  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
6970 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
6971 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
6972 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.&lt;/p&gt;
6973 </description>
6974         </item>
6975
6976         <item>
6977                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</title>
6978                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html</link>
6979                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html</guid>
6980                 <pubDate>Sun, 8 Apr 2012 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
6981                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
6982 like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
6983 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
6984 contributor to the
6985 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze&quot;&gt;Debian
6986 Edu Squeeze release manual&lt;/a&gt;.
6987
6988 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6989
6990 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
6991 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.&lt;/p&gt;
6992
6993 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6994 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
6995
6996 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
6997 reason my name&#39;s in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
6998 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
6999 they&#39;d like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
7000 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
7001 &quot;localisation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
7002
7003 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7004 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7005
7006 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7007 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7008
7009 &lt;p&gt;These questions are too hard for me - I don&#39;t use it!  In fact I
7010 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I&#39;d got out of the
7011 education system.&lt;/p&gt;
7012
7013 &lt;p&gt;I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
7014 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
7015 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
7016 money on the latest hardware.&lt;/p&gt;
7017
7018 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7019
7020 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
7021 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
7022 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).&lt;/p&gt;
7023
7024 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7025 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7026
7027 &lt;p&gt;Well, I don&#39;t know.  I suppose I&#39;d be inclined to try reasoning
7028 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
7029 you would hardly need a strategy.&lt;/p&gt;
7030 </description>
7031         </item>
7032
7033         <item>
7034                 <title>Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</title>
7035                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html</link>
7036                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html</guid>
7037                 <pubDate>Fri, 6 Apr 2012 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
7038                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent time with
7039 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slxdrift.no/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux Drift AS&lt;/a&gt; on speeding
7040 up a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
7041 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
7042 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
7043 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
7044 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
7045 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
7046 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
7047
7048 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
7049 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
7050 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
7051 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
7052 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
7053 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
7054 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
7055 around 230 access(2) calls.&lt;/p&gt;
7056
7057 &lt;p&gt;The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
7058 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
7059 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
7060 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
7061 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
7062 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
7063 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416&quot;&gt;KDE bug report
7064 from 2009&lt;/a&gt; about this problem, and it is still unsolved.&lt;/p&gt;
7065
7066 &lt;p&gt;My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
7067 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
7068 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
7069 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
7070 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
7071 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
7072 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
7073 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
7074 almost instantaneous.  I&#39;m not quite sure where to make the package
7075 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.&lt;/p&gt;
7076
7077 &lt;p&gt;The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
7078 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
7079 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
7080 that is not really an option at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
7081
7082 &lt;p&gt;If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
7083 (at) lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
7084 </description>
7085         </item>
7086
7087         <item>
7088                 <title>Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</title>
7089                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html</link>
7090                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html</guid>
7091                 <pubDate>Thu, 5 Apr 2012 08:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
7092                 <description>&lt;p&gt;About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
7093 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; by
7094 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
7095 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
7096 for schools.  Check out his article
7097 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
7098 distribution for education&lt;/a&gt; if you want to learn more.&lt;/p&gt;
7099 </description>
7100         </item>
7101
7102         <item>
7103                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</title>
7104                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html</link>
7105                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html</guid>
7106                 <pubDate>Sun, 1 Apr 2012 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
7107                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Germany is a core area for the
7108 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
7109 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
7110 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
7111
7112 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7113
7114 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve studied Mathematics at the university &#39;Ruhr-Universität&#39; in
7115 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I&#39;m working as a teacher at the school
7116 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/&quot;&gt;Westfalen-Kolleg
7117 Dortmund&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
7118 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
7119 examination &#39;Abitur&#39;, which will allow to study at a university. This
7120 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
7121 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.&lt;/p&gt;
7122
7123 &lt;p&gt;Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
7124 blended learning project called &#39;abitur-online.nrw&#39; and in some other
7125 information technology related projects. For about ten years I&#39;ve been
7126 teacher and coordinator for the &#39;abitur-online&#39; project at my
7127 school. Being now in my early sixties, I&#39;ve decided to leave school at
7128 the end of April this year.&lt;/p&gt;
7129
7130 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7131 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7132
7133 &lt;p&gt;The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
7134 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
7135 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
7136 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
7137 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
7138 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
7139 reach. At home I&#39;m using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
7140 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
7141 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
7142 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
7143 Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
7144
7145 &lt;p&gt;Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
7146 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
7147 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
7148 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
7149 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
7150 the admin teachers.&lt;/p&gt;
7151
7152 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7153 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7154
7155 &lt;p&gt;It&#39;s open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it&#39;s
7156 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
7157 So it was a perfect choice.&lt;/p&gt;
7158
7159 &lt;p&gt;Being open source, there are no license problems and so it&#39;s
7160 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
7161 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It&#39;s of
7162 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
7163 a school and to choose where to get support for this.&lt;/p&gt;
7164
7165 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7166 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7167
7168 &lt;p&gt;Nothing yet.&lt;/p&gt;
7169
7170 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7171
7172 &lt;p&gt;At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
7173 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
7174 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
7175 LibreOffice.&lt;/p&gt;
7176
7177 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7178 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7179
7180 &lt;p&gt;Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
7181 that doesn&#39;t seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
7182 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.&lt;/p&gt;
7183 </description>
7184         </item>
7185
7186         <item>
7187                 <title>Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</title>
7188                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html</link>
7189                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html</guid>
7190                 <pubDate>Sun, 25 Mar 2012 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
7191                 <description>&lt;!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html --&gt;
7192
7193 &lt;p&gt;The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
7194 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
7195 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
7196 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
7197 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
7198 and also available from &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/38601767&quot;&gt;vimeo&lt;/a&gt;
7199 and download as a
7200 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg
7201 Theora&lt;/a&gt; file.  Check it out below.&lt;/p&gt;
7202
7203 &lt;p&gt;&lt;video id=&quot;kmail-kerberos-movie&quot; width=&quot;256&quot; height=&quot;184&quot; preload controls&gt;
7204   &lt;source src=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv&quot; type=&#39;video/ogg; codecs=&quot;theora, vorbis&quot;&#39; /&gt;
7205     &lt;p&gt;Download video as
7206       &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7207 &lt;/video&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7208 </description>
7209         </item>
7210
7211         <item>
7212                 <title>Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</title>
7213                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html</link>
7214                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html</guid>
7215                 <pubDate>Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
7216                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
7217 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
7218 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;the
7219 Squeeze release&lt;/a&gt; was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
7220 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.&lt;/p&gt;
7221
7222 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7223
7224 &lt;p&gt;I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
7225 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
7226 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
7227 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
7228 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
7229 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
7230 weren&#39;t able to convert many of them into sustainable
7231 installations.&lt;/p&gt;
7232
7233 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7234 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7235
7236 &lt;p&gt;Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
7237 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
7238 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
7239 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
7240 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
7241 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
7242 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
7243 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
7244 these things we decided to try it.&lt;/p&gt;
7245
7246 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7247 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7248
7249 &lt;p&gt;By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
7250 from that I have always believed in the same &quot;sustainable computing&quot;
7251 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
7252 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
7253 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
7254 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
7255 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
7256 proprietary software everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;
7257
7258 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7259 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7260
7261 &lt;p&gt;As a newcomer I&#39;m just finding out who&#39;s who in the community and
7262 how you&#39;re organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
7263 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
7264 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
7265 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!&lt;/p&gt;
7266
7267 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7268
7269 &lt;p&gt;Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
7270 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
7271 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
7272 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I&#39;m not sure if
7273 that counts...)&lt;/p&gt;
7274
7275 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7276 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7277
7278 &lt;p&gt;That&#39;s a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
7279 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
7280 the notion of &quot;computer&quot; means simply &quot;proprietary office
7281 applications&quot;.  However, schools today are experiencing budget
7282 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
7283 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
7284 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
7285 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
7286 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they&#39;re
7287 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it&#39;s encouraging that the
7288 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.&lt;/p&gt;
7289
7290 &lt;p&gt;I don&#39;t really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
7291 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
7292 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.&lt;/p&gt;
7293 </description>
7294         </item>
7295
7296         <item>
7297                 <title>Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</title>
7298                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html</link>
7299                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
7300                 <pubDate>Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
7301                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
7302 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
7303 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
7304 believe is a very efficient work flow.&lt;/p&gt;
7305
7306 &lt;ol&gt;
7307
7308 &lt;li&gt;The documentation is written in a
7309 &lt;a href=&quot;http://moinmo.in&quot;&gt;moinmoin wiki&lt;/a&gt; (see for example
7310 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze&quot;&gt;the
7311 Squeeze release manual&lt;/a&gt;) with support for exporting the content as
7312 docbook XML.&lt;/li&gt;
7313
7314 &lt;li&gt;This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
7315 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
7316 with the translated text.&lt;/li&gt;
7317
7318 &lt;li&gt;The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
7319 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
7320 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
7321 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
7322 images.&lt;/li&gt;
7323
7324 &lt;li&gt;The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
7325 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.&lt;/li&gt;
7326
7327 &lt;li&gt;The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
7328 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.&lt;/li&gt;
7329
7330 &lt;/ol&gt;
7331
7332 &lt;p&gt;This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
7333 issue is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://moinmo.in/DocBook&quot;&gt;the docbook support
7334 we use in moinmoin&lt;/a&gt; is not actively maintained.  The docbook
7335 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
7336 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.&lt;/p&gt;
7337
7338 &lt;p&gt;If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
7339 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc&quot;&gt;debian-edu-doc
7340 package&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7341 </description>
7342         </item>
7343
7344         <item>
7345                 <title>Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</title>
7346                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html</link>
7347                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html</guid>
7348                 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
7349                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
7350 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux / Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt; based
7351 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
7352 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
7353 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
7354 you have not done so already.&lt;/p&gt;
7355
7356 &lt;p&gt;I plan to present the new version at
7357 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/&quot;&gt;a NUUG
7358 meeting&lt;/a&gt; on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
7359 in Oslo, Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
7360 </description>
7361         </item>
7362
7363         <item>
7364                 <title>Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</title>
7365                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html</link>
7366                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html</guid>
7367                 <pubDate>Fri, 9 Mar 2012 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
7368                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/&quot;&gt;the
7369 interview series&lt;/a&gt; conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
7370 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7371 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
7372 more international audience.&lt;/p&gt;
7373
7374 &lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu and
7375 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
7376 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
7377 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
7378 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
7379 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
7380 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
7381
7382
7383 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7384
7385 &lt;p&gt;My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
7386 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
7387 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
7388 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
7389 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
7390 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
7391 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
7392 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
7393 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
7394 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
7395 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
7396
7397 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7398 project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7399
7400 &lt;p&gt;In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
7401 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
7402 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
7403 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn&#39;t really improve my setup. I
7404 did various desperate searches for things like &quot;school Linux server&quot;
7405 and ended up in a document called &quot;Drift&quot; something or other. Reading
7406 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
7407 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
7408 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
7409 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
7410 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
7411 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
7412 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.&lt;/p&gt;
7413
7414 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7415 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7416
7417 &lt;p&gt;For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
7418 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
7419 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
7420 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
7421 doesn&#39;t necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
7422 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
7423 Japan.&lt;/p&gt;
7424
7425 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7426 Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7427
7428 &lt;p&gt;The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
7429 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
7430 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
7431 who don&#39;t need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
7432 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
7433 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
7434 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
7435 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
7436 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
7437 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
7438 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
7439 multiplies. For example, backup wasn&#39;t working properly in Lenny. It
7440 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
7441 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
7442 help.&lt;/p&gt;
7443
7444 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7445
7446 &lt;p&gt;Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
7447 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
7448 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
7449 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
7450 house, that&#39;s very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
7451 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
7452 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
7453 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
7454 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
7455 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
7456 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.&lt;/p&gt;
7457
7458 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7459 get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7460
7461 &lt;p&gt;Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
7462 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
7463 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
7464 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
7465 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
7466 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
7467 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
7468 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
7469 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
7470 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
7471 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn&#39;t work, or their browser
7472 doesn&#39;t play flash, for example.&lt;/p&gt;
7473 </description>
7474         </item>
7475
7476         <item>
7477                 <title>Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</title>
7478                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html</link>
7479                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html</guid>
7480                 <pubDate>Wed, 7 Mar 2012 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
7481                 <description>&lt;!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html --&gt;
7482
7483 &lt;p&gt;One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
7484 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
7485 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
7486 also available from &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/37675399&quot;&gt;vimeo&lt;/a&gt; and
7487 download as a
7488 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg
7489 Theora&lt;/a&gt; file.  Check it out below.&lt;/p&gt;
7490
7491 &lt;p&gt;&lt;video id=&quot;gosa-mass-user-create-movie&quot; width=&quot;256&quot; height=&quot;184&quot; preload controls&gt;
7492   &lt;source src=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv&quot; type=&#39;video/ogg; codecs=&quot;theora, vorbis&quot;&#39; /&gt;
7493     &lt;p&gt;Download video as
7494       &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv&quot;&gt;Ogg&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
7495 &lt;/video&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7496 </description>
7497         </item>
7498
7499         <item>
7500                 <title>Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
7501                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
7502                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
7503                 <pubDate>Sun, 4 Mar 2012 18:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
7504                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
7505 candidate for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
7506 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
7507 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
7508 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
7509 need a software solution for your school.&lt;/p&gt;
7510 </description>
7511         </item>
7512
7513         <item>
7514                 <title>Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</title>
7515                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html</link>
7516                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html</guid>
7517                 <pubDate>Sat, 3 Mar 2012 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
7518                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
7519 / Debian Edu project&lt;/a&gt; initiated a student project to create a tool
7520 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
7521 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called &quot;stopmotion&quot;,
7522 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
7523 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
7524 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
7525 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
7526 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
7527 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
7528 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
7529 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
7530 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
7531 year...&lt;/p&gt;
7532
7533 &lt;p&gt;Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
7534 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
7535 name,
7536 &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/&quot;&gt;linuxstopmotion&lt;/a&gt;.
7537 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
7538 Internet search engines (try to search for &#39;stopmotion&#39; to see what I
7539 mean). I&#39;ve been following
7540 &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community&quot;&gt;the
7541 mailing list&lt;/a&gt; and the improvement already in place and planned for
7542 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
7543 Check it out. :)&lt;/p&gt;
7544 </description>
7545         </item>
7546
7547         <item>
7548                 <title>Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
7549                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
7550                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
7551                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
7552                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
7553 candidate for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu /
7554 Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
7555 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
7556 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
7557 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
7558 need a software solution for your school.&lt;/p&gt;
7559 </description>
7560         </item>
7561
7562         <item>
7563                 <title>First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
7564                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
7565                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
7566                 <pubDate>Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
7567                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
7568 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
7569 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based
7570 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
7571 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
7572 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
7573 solution for your school.&lt;/p&gt;
7574 </description>
7575         </item>
7576
7577         <item>
7578                 <title>How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</title>
7579                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html</link>
7580                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html</guid>
7581                 <pubDate>Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
7582                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
7583 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
7584 &lt;a href=&quot;http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532&quot;&gt;I was
7585 close&lt;/a&gt; this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
7586 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
7587 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
7588 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
7589 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
7590 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.&lt;/p&gt;
7591
7592 &lt;p&gt;After fumbling a bit, I
7593 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/&quot;&gt;found
7594 that hdparm -I&lt;/a&gt; will report the disk serial number, which is
7595 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
7596 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:&lt;/p&gt;
7597
7598 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7599 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep &#39;(F)&#39;|tr &#39; &#39; &quot;\n&quot;|grep &#39;(F)&#39;|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
7600 do
7601     printf &quot;Failed disk $d: &quot;
7602     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep &#39;Serial Num&#39;
7603 done
7604 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
7605
7606 &lt;p&gt;Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
7607 next time, and in case other find it useful.&lt;/p&gt;
7608
7609 &lt;p&gt;At the moment I have two failing disk. :(&lt;/p&gt;
7610
7611 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7612 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
7613 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
7614 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
7615 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
7616
7617 &lt;p&gt;The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
7618 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
7619 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
7620 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
7621 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
7622 mounted inside my box.&lt;/p&gt;
7623
7624 &lt;p&gt;I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
7625 Software RAID in the
7626 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html&quot;&gt;nagios-plugins-standard&lt;/a&gt;
7627 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
7628 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
7629 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
7630 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
7631 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.&lt;/p&gt;
7632 </description>
7633         </item>
7634
7635         <item>
7636                 <title>Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</title>
7637                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</link>
7638                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html</guid>
7639                 <pubDate>Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
7640                 <description>&lt;p&gt;New in the Squeeze version of
7641 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; is the
7642 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
7643 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
7644 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from &lt;tt&gt;http://wpad/wpad.dat&lt;/tt&gt;, to
7645 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
7646 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
7647 change the global proxy setting by editing
7648 &lt;tt&gt;tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat&lt;/tt&gt; and the change propagate
7649 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.&lt;/p&gt;
7650
7651 &lt;p&gt;The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
7652 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
7653 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):&lt;/p&gt;
7654
7655 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7656 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
7657 {
7658    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
7659        isPlainHostName(host) ||
7660        dnsDomainIs(host, &quot;.intern&quot;))
7661       return &quot;DIRECT&quot;;
7662    else
7663       return &quot;PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT&quot;;
7664 }
7665 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7666
7667 &lt;p&gt;to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:&lt;/p&gt;
7668
7669 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7670 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
7671 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
7672 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
7673
7674 &lt;p&gt;To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
7675 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
7676 would be used for
7677 &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/&quot;&gt;http://www.debian.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;,
7678 and insert this extracted proxy URL in &lt;tt&gt;/etc/environment&lt;/tt&gt; and
7679 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/apt/apt.conf&lt;/tt&gt;.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
7680 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
7681 javascript code is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/631045&quot;&gt;no longer
7682 able to build&lt;/a&gt; because the C library it depended on is now a C++
7683 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
7684 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
7685 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
7686 known alternative is known at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
7687
7688 &lt;p&gt;This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
7689 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
7690 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
7691 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
7692 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
7693 announced, direct connections will be used instead.&lt;/p&gt;
7694
7695 &lt;p&gt;Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
7696 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
7697 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
7698 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
7699 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
7700 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
7701 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
7702 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
7703 the network setup changes.&lt;/p&gt;
7704
7705 &lt;p&gt;The WPAD system is documented in a
7706 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01&quot;&gt;IETF
7707 draft&lt;/a&gt; and a
7708 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol&quot;&gt;Wikipedia
7709 page&lt;/a&gt; for those that want to learn more.&lt;/p&gt;
7710 </description>
7711         </item>
7712
7713         <item>
7714                 <title>Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</title>
7715                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html</link>
7716                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html</guid>
7717                 <pubDate>Sun, 5 Feb 2012 09:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
7718                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since the Lenny version of
7719 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;, a
7720 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
7721 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
7722 in the morning.  This is done using the
7723 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html&quot;&gt;shutdown-at-night&lt;/a&gt; Debian package.&lt;/p&gt;
7724
7725 &lt;p&gt;To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
7726 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
7727 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
7728 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
7729 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
7730 the
7731 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html&quot;&gt;nvram-wakeup&lt;/a&gt;
7732 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
7733 10 minutes.  If this isn&#39;t working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
7734 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
7735 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
7736
7737 &lt;p&gt;It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
7738 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
7739 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
7740 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I&#39;ve seen old
7741 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
7742 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
7743 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.&lt;/p&gt;
7744
7745 &lt;p&gt;The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
7746 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
7747 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
7748 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night&lt;/tt&gt; to enable it.
7749 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?&lt;/p&gt;
7750 </description>
7751         </item>
7752
7753         <item>
7754                 <title>Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
7755                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
7756                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
7757                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Feb 2012 13:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
7758                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
7759 publish the third beta version of
7760 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based
7761 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
7762 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
7763 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
7764 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
7765 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
7766 on the project announcement list.&lt;/p&gt;
7767
7768 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
7769 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):&lt;/p&gt;
7770
7771 &lt;ul&gt;
7772
7773 &lt;li&gt;It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
7774   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
7775   the installation.&lt;/li&gt;
7776
7777 &lt;li&gt;Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
7778   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.&lt;/li&gt;
7779
7780 &lt;li&gt;The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
7781   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
7782   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.&lt;/li&gt;
7783
7784 &lt;li&gt;The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
7785   for the local system administrator is created during installation
7786   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
7787   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
7788   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
7789   up to date on the system.&lt;/li&gt;
7790
7791 &lt;/ul&gt;
7792
7793 &lt;p&gt;The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
7794 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
7795 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
7796 final Squeeze release is published.&lt;/p&gt;
7797
7798 &lt;p&gt;Next weekend the project organise a
7799 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html&quot;&gt;developer
7800 gathering&lt;/a&gt; in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
7801 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
7802 will see you there?&lt;/p&gt;
7803 </description>
7804         </item>
7805
7806         <item>
7807                 <title>Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</title>
7808                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</link>
7809                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</guid>
7810                 <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
7811                 <description>&lt;p&gt;With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
7812 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
7813 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; based
7814 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
7815 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
7816 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
7817 work, but there are other use cases as well.&lt;/p&gt;
7818
7819 &lt;p&gt;First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
7820 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
7821 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
7822 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
7823 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
7824 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
7825 not taken care of by this.&lt;/p&gt;
7826
7827 &lt;p&gt;For non-network devices, we provide the script
7828 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware&lt;/tt&gt; which
7829 search through the &lt;tt&gt;dmesg&lt;/tt&gt; output for drivers requesting extra
7830 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
7831 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
7832 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
7833 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
7834 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/655507&quot;&gt;#655507&lt;/a&gt;), to allow PXE
7835 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
7836 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
7837 firmware packages.&lt;/p&gt;
7838
7839 &lt;p&gt;Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
7840 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
7841 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
7842 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
7843 initrd with extra firmware, the
7844 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware&lt;/tt&gt; script is
7845 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
7846 PXE initrd with firmware packages.&lt;/p&gt;
7847
7848 &lt;p&gt;Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
7849 network cards working.  For this,
7850 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware&lt;/tt&gt; is
7851 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
7852 the same way as the other firmware related tools.&lt;/p&gt;
7853
7854 &lt;p&gt;At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
7855 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
7856 non-free software, and it is their choice.&lt;/p&gt;
7857
7858 &lt;p&gt;We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
7859 try.&lt;/p&gt;
7860 </description>
7861         </item>
7862
7863         <item>
7864                 <title>Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</title>
7865                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</link>
7866                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</guid>
7867                 <pubDate>Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
7868                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The next version of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu
7869 / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; will include a new tool
7870 &lt;tt&gt;sitesummary2ldapdhcp&lt;/tt&gt;, which can be used to quickly set up all
7871 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
7872 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.&lt;/p&gt;
7873
7874 &lt;p&gt;First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
7875 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
7876 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
7877 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
7878 this is done, log on to the central server and run
7879 &lt;tt&gt;sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a&lt;/tt&gt; in the &lt;tt&gt;konsole&lt;/tt&gt; to use the
7880 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
7881 will look similar to this:&lt;/p&gt;
7882
7883 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
7884 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
7885 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
7886 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
7887
7888 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
7889
7890 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7891 enter password: *******
7892 %
7893 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
7894
7895 &lt;p&gt;After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
7896 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
7897 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
7898 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
7899 then to log into &lt;a href=&quot;https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/&quot;&gt;GOsa&lt;/a&gt;,
7900 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
7901 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
7902 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
7903 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
7904 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
7905 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
7906 automatically.&lt;/p&gt;
7907
7908 &lt;p&gt;We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
7909 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.&lt;/p&gt;
7910
7911 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
7912 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
7913 original text, and have added it to the text now.&lt;/p&gt;
7914 </description>
7915         </item>
7916
7917         <item>
7918                 <title>Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</title>
7919                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</link>
7920                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html</guid>
7921                 <pubDate>Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
7922                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Squeeze version of
7923 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; soon
7924 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
7925 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
7926 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
7927 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
7928 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
7929 first time.&lt;/p&gt;
7930
7931 &lt;p&gt;The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
7932 labeledURI with &quot;http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux&quot; as the
7933 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
7934 to see the page behind this new URL.&lt;/p&gt;
7935
7936 &lt;p&gt;An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
7937 called as &quot;&lt;tt&gt;ldapvi -ZD &#39;(cn=admin)&#39;&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to update LDAP with the
7938 new setting.&lt;/p&gt;
7939
7940 &lt;p&gt;We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
7941 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
7942 from within Iceweasel instead.&lt;/p&gt;
7943 </description>
7944         </item>
7945
7946         <item>
7947                 <title>Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</title>
7948                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</link>
7949                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html</guid>
7950                 <pubDate>Sat, 7 Jan 2012 22:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
7951                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
7952 the second beta version of
7953 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.  If
7954 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
7955 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
7956 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
7957 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
7958 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html&quot;&gt;available&lt;/a&gt;
7959 on the project announcement list.&lt;/p&gt;
7960 </description>
7961         </item>
7962
7963         <item>
7964                 <title>Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</title>
7965                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html</link>
7966                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
7967                 <pubDate>Tue, 3 Jan 2012 11:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
7968                 <description>&lt;p&gt;During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
7969 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; ready
7970 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
7971 interesting.&lt;/p&gt;
7972
7973 &lt;P&gt;The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
7974 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
7975 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
7976 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
7977 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
7978 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
7979 wrap up its tasks.&lt;/p&gt;
7980
7981 &lt;p&gt;Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
7982 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
7983 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
7984 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
7985 because I was typing.&lt;/P&gt;
7986
7987 &lt;p&gt;The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
7988 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
7989 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
7990 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do &#39;find /&#39; to
7991 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
7992 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
7993 generate entropy.&lt;/p&gt;
7994
7995 &lt;p&gt;The fix is in
7996 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation&quot;&gt;beta1
7997 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze&lt;/a&gt; version, and we
7998 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu&quot;&gt;welcome more testers and
7999 developers&lt;/a&gt;.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
8000 </description>
8001         </item>
8002
8003         <item>
8004                 <title>Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</title>
8005                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</link>
8006                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</guid>
8007                 <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
8008                 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
8009 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
8010 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
8011 up to date.  If the firmware isn&#39;t the latest and greatest, the
8012 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
8013 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
8014 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
8015 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
8016 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
8017 the tools to do so.&lt;/p&gt;
8018
8019 &lt;p&gt;To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
8020 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
8021 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
8022 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.&lt;/P&gt;
8023
8024 &lt;p&gt;On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
8025 &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&quot;&gt;an XML file&lt;/a&gt;
8026 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
8027 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
8028 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
8029 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
8030 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
8031 be activated on the first reboot.&lt;/p&gt;
8032
8033 &lt;p&gt;This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
8034 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
8035 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.&lt;/p&gt;
8036
8037 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8038 #!/usr/bin/perl
8039 use strict;
8040 use warnings;
8041 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
8042 BEGIN {
8043     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
8044     my %rhelmodules = (
8045         &#39;XML::Simple&#39; =&gt; &#39;perl-XML-Simple&#39;,
8046         );
8047     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
8048         eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
8049         if ($@) {
8050             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
8051             system(&quot;yum install -y $pkg&quot;);
8052             eval &quot;use $module;&quot;;
8053         }
8054     }
8055 }
8056 my $errorsto = &#39;pere@hungry.com&#39;;
8057
8058 upgrade_dell();
8059
8060 exit 0;
8061
8062 sub run_firmware_script {
8063     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
8064     unless ($script) {
8065         print STDERR &quot;fail: missing script name\n&quot;;
8066         exit 1
8067     }
8068     print STDERR &quot;Running $script\n\n&quot;;
8069
8070     if (0 == system(&quot;sh $script $opts&quot;)) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
8071         print STDERR &quot;success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n&quot;;
8072     } else {
8073         print STDERR &quot;fail: firmware script returned error\n&quot;;
8074     }
8075 }
8076
8077 sub run_firmware_scripts {
8078     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
8079     # Run firmware packages
8080     for my $dir (@dirs) {
8081         print STDERR &quot;info: Running scripts in $dir\n&quot;;
8082         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die &quot;Unable to open directory $dir: $!&quot;;
8083         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
8084             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
8085             run_firmware_script($opts, &quot;$dir/$s&quot;);
8086         }
8087         closedir $dh;
8088     }
8089 }
8090
8091 sub download {
8092     my $url = shift;
8093     print STDERR &quot;info: Downloading $url\n&quot;;
8094     system(&quot;wget --quiet \&quot;$url\&quot;&quot;);
8095 }
8096
8097 sub upgrade_dell {
8098     my @dirs;
8099     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
8100     chomp $product;
8101
8102     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
8103
8104         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
8105         system(&#39;yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail&#39;);
8106
8107         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
8108             CLEANUP =&gt; 1
8109             );
8110         chdir($tmpdir);
8111         fetch_dell_fw(&#39;catalog/Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
8112         system(&#39;gunzip Catalog.xml.gz&#39;);
8113         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list(&#39;Catalog.xml&#39;);
8114         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
8115         my $fwopts = &quot;-q&quot;;
8116         if (@paths) {
8117             for my $url (@paths) {
8118                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
8119             }
8120             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
8121         } else {
8122             print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
8123             print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
8124         }
8125         chdir(&#39;/&#39;);
8126     } else {
8127         print STDERR &quot;error: Unsupported Dell model &#39;$product&#39;.\n&quot;;
8128         print STDERR &quot;error: Please report to $errorsto.\n&quot;;
8129     }
8130 }
8131
8132 sub fetch_dell_fw {
8133     my $path = shift;
8134     my $url = &quot;ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path&quot;;
8135     download($url);
8136 }
8137
8138 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
8139 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
8140 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
8141 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
8142     my $filename = shift;
8143
8144     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
8145     chomp $product;
8146     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
8147
8148     print STDERR &quot;Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n&quot;;
8149
8150     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
8151     my @paths;
8152     for my $bundle (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareBundle}}) {
8153         my $brand = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
8154         my $model = $bundle-&gt;{TargetSystems}-&gt;{Brand}-&gt;{Model}-&gt;{Display}-&gt;{content};
8155         my $oscode;
8156         if (&quot;ARRAY&quot; eq ref $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}) {
8157             $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}[0]-&gt;{osCode};
8158         } else {
8159             $oscode = $bundle-&gt;{TargetOSes}-&gt;{OperatingSystem}-&gt;{osCode};
8160         }
8161         if ($mybrand eq $brand &amp;&amp; $mymodel eq $model &amp;&amp; &quot;LIN&quot; eq $oscode)
8162         {
8163             @paths = map { $_-&gt;{path} } @{$bundle-&gt;{Contents}-&gt;{Package}};
8164         }
8165     }
8166     for my $component (@{$xml-&gt;{SoftwareComponent}}) {
8167         my $componenttype = $component-&gt;{ComponentType}-&gt;{value};
8168
8169         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
8170         next if &#39;APAC&#39; eq $componenttype;
8171
8172         my $cpath = $component-&gt;{path};
8173         for my $path (@paths) {
8174             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
8175                 push(@paths, $cpath);
8176             }
8177         }
8178     }
8179     return @paths;
8180 }
8181 &lt;/pre&gt;
8182
8183 &lt;p&gt;The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
8184 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
8185 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
8186 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
8187 outdated.&lt;/p&gt;
8188 </description>
8189         </item>
8190
8191         <item>
8192                 <title>Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</title>
8193                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html</link>
8194                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html</guid>
8195                 <pubDate>Fri, 7 Oct 2011 19:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
8196                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
8197 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
8198 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
8199 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
8200 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
8201 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
8202 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
8203 models.&lt;/p&gt;
8204
8205 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, while reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://boklaben.no/?p=220&quot;&gt;part of
8206 this debate&lt;/a&gt;, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
8207 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
8208 to a better model.  The idea is simple:&lt;/p&gt;
8209
8210 &lt;p&gt;Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
8211 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
8212 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
8213 by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Gutenberg&lt;/a&gt; (about
8214 36,000 books), &lt;a href=&quot;http://runeberg.org/&quot;&gt;Project Runenberg&lt;/a&gt;
8215 (1149 books) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/details/texts&quot;&gt;The
8216 Internet Archive&lt;/a&gt; (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
8217 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
8218 distributed.&lt;/p&gt;
8219
8220 &lt;p&gt;The computer system would make it easy to:&lt;/p&gt;
8221
8222 &lt;ul&gt;
8223
8224 &lt;li&gt;Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
8225   other relevant equipment.&lt;/li&gt;
8226
8227 &lt;li&gt;Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.&lt;/li&gt;
8228
8229 &lt;/ul&gt;
8230
8231 &lt;p&gt;In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
8232 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
8233 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
8234 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
8235 books available.&lt;/p&gt;
8236
8237 &lt;p&gt;Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
8238 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
8239 libraries. :)&lt;/p&gt;
8240 </description>
8241         </item>
8242
8243         <item>
8244                 <title>Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</title>
8245                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html</link>
8246                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html</guid>
8247                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Sep 2011 20:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
8248                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
8249 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
8250 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
8251 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
8252 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
8253 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
8254 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
8255 perfectly legal here in Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
8256
8257 &lt;p&gt;Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:&lt;/p&gt;
8258
8259 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8260 #!/bin/sh
8261 # apt-get install lsdvd
8262 title=$(lsdvd 2&gt;/dev/null|awk &#39;/Disc Title: / {print $3}&#39;)
8263 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
8264 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8265
8266 &lt;p&gt;But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
8267 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
8268 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
8269 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.&lt;/p&gt;
8270
8271 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
8272 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
8273 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
8274 back as an ISO.
8275
8276 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
8277 #!/bin/sh
8278 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
8279 set -e
8280 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
8281 title=$(lsdvd 2&gt;/dev/null|awk &#39;/Disc Title: / {print $3}&#39;)
8282 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
8283 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
8284 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
8285 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
8286
8287 &lt;p&gt;Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?&lt;/p&gt;
8288
8289 &lt;p&gt;Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
8290 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
8291 read optical media, and is called like this: &lt;tt&gt;readom dev=/dev/dvd
8292 f=image.iso&lt;/tt&gt;.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
8293 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.&lt;/p&gt;
8294
8295 &lt;p&gt;Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
8296 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo&quot;&gt;his
8297 program python-dvdvideo&lt;/a&gt;, which seem to be just what I am looking
8298 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
8299 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
8300 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
8301 </description>
8302         </item>
8303
8304         <item>
8305                 <title>How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</title>
8306                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</link>
8307                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html</guid>
8308                 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Aug 2011 12:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
8309                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Wouter Verhelst have some
8310 &lt;a href=&quot;http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot&quot;&gt;interesting
8311 comments and opinions&lt;/a&gt; on my blog post on
8312 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html&quot;&gt;the
8313 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian&lt;/a&gt; and my blog post about
8314 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html&quot;&gt;the
8315 default KDE desktop in Debian&lt;/a&gt;.  I only have time to address one
8316 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
8317 misunderstanding he bring forward:&lt;/p&gt;
8318
8319 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
8320 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
8321 single-user system (by adding &#39;single&#39; to the kernel command line;
8322 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
8323 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
8324
8325 &lt;p&gt;This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
8326 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
8327 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
8328 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
8329 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn&#39;t the same as single user
8330 mode.  I&#39;ll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
8331 hard to explain.&lt;/p&gt;
8332
8333 &lt;p&gt;Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
8334 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  This means the only thing that is
8335 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
8336 state &quot;between&quot; the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
8337 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
8338 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
8339 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
8340 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
8341 runs &quot;init -t1 S&quot; to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
8342 1.  It is confusing that the &#39;S&#39; (single user) init mode is not the
8343 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
8344 mode).&lt;/p&gt;
8345
8346 &lt;p&gt;This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
8347 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
8348 &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  When booting into
8349 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: &quot;&lt;tt&gt;/etc/init.d/rc
8350 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;.  A problem show up when
8351 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
8352 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
8353 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
8354 after visiting single user mode.&lt;/p&gt;
8355
8356 &lt;p&gt;A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
8357 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
8358 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
8359 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
8360 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
8361 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
8362 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; to get a
8363 functioning single user mode during boot.&lt;/p&gt;
8364
8365 &lt;p&gt;I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
8366 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
8367 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.&lt;/p&gt;
8368 </description>
8369         </item>
8370
8371         <item>
8372                 <title>What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</title>
8373                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</link>
8374                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html</guid>
8375                 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
8376                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
8377 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
8378 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
8379 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
8380 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
8381 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
8382 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
8383 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
8384 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
8385 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
8386 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
8387 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
8388 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.&lt;/p&gt;
8389
8390 &lt;p&gt;So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
8391 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
8392 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
8393 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
8394 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
8395 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
8396 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
8397 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
8398 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.&lt;/p&gt;
8399
8400 &lt;p&gt;Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
8401 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
8402 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
8403 is presented.&lt;/p&gt;
8404
8405 &lt;p&gt;As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
8406 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
8407 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
8408 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
8409 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
8410 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
8411 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
8412 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
8413 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
8414 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
8415 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
8416 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
8417 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
8418 find time to push this forward.&lt;/p&gt;
8419 </description>
8420         </item>
8421
8422         <item>
8423                 <title>What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</title>
8424                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</link>
8425                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html</guid>
8426                 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
8427                 <description>&lt;p&gt;While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
8428 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
8429 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
8430 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
8431 issues.&lt;/p&gt;
8432
8433 &lt;p&gt;I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
8434 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
8435 do this in Debian we would have a source.&lt;/p&gt;
8436
8437 &lt;ol&gt;
8438
8439 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.&lt;/strong&gt; When there
8440 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
8441 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
8442 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
8443 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
8444 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
8445 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
8446 Debian.&lt;/li&gt;
8447
8448 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
8449 plugins.&lt;/strong&gt; When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
8450 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
8451 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
8452 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
8453 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
8454 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
8455 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
8456 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
8457 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
8458 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
8459 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
8460 not the browser for any missing features.&lt;/li&gt;
8461
8462 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
8463 handlers.&lt;/strong&gt; When the media players encounter a format or codec
8464 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
8465 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
8466 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
8467 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
8468 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
8469 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
8470 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
8471 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.&lt;/li&gt;
8472
8473 &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Better browser handling of some MIME types.&lt;/strong&gt; When
8474 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
8475 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
8476 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
8477 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
8478 latter behaviour.&lt;/li&gt;
8479
8480 &lt;/ol&gt;
8481
8482 &lt;p&gt;There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
8483 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
8484 it do not matter much.&lt;/p&gt;
8485
8486 &lt;p&gt;I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
8487 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
8488 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.&lt;/p&gt;
8489 </description>
8490         </item>
8491
8492         <item>
8493                 <title>Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</title>
8494                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</link>
8495                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html</guid>
8496                 <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
8497                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The Norwegian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/A&gt;
8498 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
8499 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
8500 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
8501 security support for a few years.&lt;/p&gt;
8502
8503 &lt;p&gt;The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
8504 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
8505 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
8506 their own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; clone
8507 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
8508 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn&#39;t very long, and I hope the perl group
8509 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
8510 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
8511 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
8512 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
8513 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
8514 easier in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
8515
8516 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
8517 installed on my server was a simple call to &#39;cpan2deb Module::Name&#39;
8518 and &#39;dpkg -i&#39; to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
8519 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
8520 do not have time for.&lt;/p&gt;
8521 </description>
8522         </item>
8523
8524         <item>
8525                 <title>Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</title>
8526                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html</link>
8527                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html</guid>
8528                 <pubDate>Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
8529                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Reading
8530 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/&quot;&gt;the
8531 thingiverse blog&lt;/a&gt;, I came across two highlights of interesting
8532 parts of the
8533 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA&quot;&gt;Autodesk&lt;/a&gt;
8534 and
8535 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html&quot;&gt;Microsoft
8536 Kinect&lt;/a&gt; End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
8537 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
8538 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.&lt;/p&gt;
8539 </description>
8540         </item>
8541
8542         <item>
8543                 <title>Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</title>
8544                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html</link>
8545                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html</guid>
8546                 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
8547                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today, the first draft implementation of an
8548 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open311.org/&quot;&gt;Open311 API&lt;/a&gt; for the Norwegian
8549 service &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt; started to
8550 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
8551 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
8552 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
8553 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
8554 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
8555 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
8556 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.&lt;/p&gt;
8557
8558 &lt;p&gt;Where is it?  Visit
8559 &lt;a href=&quot;http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/&quot;&gt;http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/&lt;/a&gt;
8560 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
8561 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami&quot;&gt;fiksgatami
8562 (at) nuug.no&lt;/a&gt; mailing list.&lt;/p&gt;
8563 </description>
8564         </item>
8565
8566         <item>
8567                 <title>Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</title>
8568                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html</link>
8569                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html</guid>
8570                 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Apr 2011 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
8571                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
8572 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open311.org/&quot;&gt;Open311 API&lt;/a&gt; in the
8573 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian FixMyStreet service&lt;/a&gt;.
8574 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
8575 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
8576 &lt;a href=&quot;http://fixmystreet.org.nz/&quot;&gt;New Zealand version&lt;/a&gt; of
8577 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
8578 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
8579 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
8580 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
8581 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
8582 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
8583 issues with the Open311 specification.&lt;/p&gt;
8584
8585 &lt;p&gt;One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
8586 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
8587 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
8588 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
8589 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
8590 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
8591 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
8592 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
8593 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
8594 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
8595 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
8596 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
8597 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.&lt;/p&gt;
8598
8599 &lt;p&gt;A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
8600 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
8601 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
8602 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
8603 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
8604 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
8605 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
8606 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
8607 it.&lt;/p&gt;
8608
8609 &lt;p&gt;The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
8610 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
8611 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I&#39;m not
8612 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
8613 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
8614 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
8615 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.&lt;/p&gt;
8616
8617 &lt;p&gt;The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
8618 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
8619 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
8620 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
8621 and range= options.&lt;/p&gt;
8622
8623 &lt;p&gt;The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
8624 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
8625 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
8626 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
8627 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
8628 to best handle this.  I&#39;ve noticed
8629 &lt;a href=&quot;http://seeclickfix.com/open311/&quot;&gt;SeeClickFix&lt;/a&gt; added
8630 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
8631 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
8632 Will have to investigate this a bit more.&lt;/p&gt;
8633
8634 &lt;p&gt;My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
8635 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
8636 list available via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gmane.org/&quot;&gt;Gmane&lt;/a&gt; to use for
8637 discussions instead of only
8638 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss&quot;&gt;a forum&lt;a/&gt;.  Oh,
8639 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I&#39;ve
8640 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
8641 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
8642 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
8643 work like the free software project communities I am used to.&lt;/p&gt;
8644 </description>
8645         </item>
8646
8647         <item>
8648                 <title>Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</title>
8649                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html</link>
8650                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html</guid>
8651                 <pubDate>Wed, 6 Apr 2011 09:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
8652                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getgnash.org/&quot;&gt;The Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; is still
8653 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
8654 A few days ago the project
8655 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html&quot;&gt;announced&lt;/a&gt;
8656 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
8657 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
8658 into Gnash.&lt;/p&gt;
8659 </description>
8660         </item>
8661
8662         <item>
8663                 <title>A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</title>
8664                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</link>
8665                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html</guid>
8666                 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Apr 2011 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
8667                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
8668 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
8669 update in English.&lt;/p&gt;
8670
8671 &lt;p&gt;The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
8672 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
8673 of the British service
8674 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fixmystreet.com/&quot;&gt;FixMyStreet&lt;/a&gt; up and running,
8675 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
8676 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
8677 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
8678 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysociety.org/&quot;&gt;mySociety&lt;/a&gt; on what to develop,
8679 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
8680 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
8681 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
8682 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
8683 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt; is using
8684 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/&quot;&gt;OpenStreetmap&lt;/a&gt; as the map
8685 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
8686 support for this had to be added/fixed.&lt;/p&gt;
8687
8688 &lt;p&gt;The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
8689 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
8690 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
8691 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
8692 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
8693 public infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;
8694
8695 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
8696 such service?&lt;/p&gt;
8697 </description>
8698         </item>
8699
8700         <item>
8701                 <title>Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</title>
8702                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</link>
8703                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html</guid>
8704                 <pubDate>Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
8705                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
8706 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
8707 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
8708 available on the Internet, and check our locally
8709 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
8710 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
8711 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
8712 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
8713 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
8714 out which security holes were present in our free software
8715 collection.&lt;/p&gt;
8716
8717 &lt;p&gt;After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
8718 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
8719 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
8720 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
8721 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
8722 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
8723 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
8724 solution.  Enter the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html&quot;&gt;Common
8725 Platform Enumeration&lt;/a&gt; dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
8726 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
8727 mapped to CVEs in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/&quot;&gt;National
8728 Vulnerability Database&lt;/a&gt;, allowing me to look up know security
8729 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
8730 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
8731 This is fairly trivial (I google for &#39;cve cpe $package&#39; and check the
8732 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).&lt;/p&gt;
8733
8734 &lt;p&gt;To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
8735 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
8736 check out, one could look up
8737 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3&quot;&gt;cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
8738 in NVD&lt;/a&gt; and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
8739 The most recent one is
8740 &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001&quot;&gt;CVE-2010-0001&lt;/a&gt;,
8741 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
8742 list of affected versions is provided.&lt;/p&gt;
8743
8744 &lt;p&gt;The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
8745 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I&#39;ve written a
8746 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
8747 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
8748 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
8749 security issues out.&lt;/p&gt;
8750
8751 &lt;p&gt;Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
8752 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
8753 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
8754 RHEL is providing
8755 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt&quot;&gt;a
8756 map from CVE to CPE&lt;/a&gt;, indicating that they are using the CPE
8757 information.  I&#39;m not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.&lt;/p&gt;
8758
8759 &lt;p&gt;To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
8760 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
8761 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
8762 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
8763 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
8764 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
8765 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
8766 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
8767 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
8768 established soon.&lt;/p&gt;
8769
8770 &lt;p&gt;An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
8771 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
8772 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
8773 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
8774 for their packages.&lt;/p&gt;
8775 </description>
8776         </item>
8777
8778         <item>
8779                 <title>Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</title>
8780                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</link>
8781                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html</guid>
8782                 <pubDate>Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
8783                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the
8784 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data&quot;&gt;discover-data&lt;/a&gt;
8785 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
8786 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
8787 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
8788 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
8789 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
8790 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
8791 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
8792 &lt;tt&gt;/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3&gt;&amp;1&lt;/tt&gt;.  The relevant output on
8793 one of my machines like this:&lt;/p&gt;
8794
8795 &lt;pre&gt;
8796 loaded modules:
8797 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
8798 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
8799 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
8800 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
8801 10de:03ec pata_amd
8802 10de:03f6 sata_nv
8803 1022:1103 k8temp
8804 109e:036e bttv
8805 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
8806 11ab:4364 sky2
8807 &lt;/pre&gt;
8808
8809 &lt;p&gt;The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
8810 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:&lt;/p&gt;
8811
8812 &lt;pre&gt;
8813 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
8814     echo loaded pci modules:
8815     (
8816         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
8817         for address in * ; do
8818             if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
8819                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
8820                 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
8821                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
8822                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $3}&#39;`
8823                     echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
8824                 fi
8825             fi
8826         done
8827     )
8828     echo
8829 fi
8830 &lt;/pre&gt;
8831
8832 &lt;p&gt;Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
8833 mappings:&lt;/p&gt;
8834
8835 &lt;pre&gt;
8836 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
8837     echo loaded usb modules:
8838     (
8839         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
8840         for address in * ; do
8841             if [ -d &quot;$address/driver/module&quot; ] ; then
8842                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
8843                 if grep -q &quot;^$module &quot; /proc/modules ; then
8844                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
8845                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk &#39;{print $6}&#39;)
8846                     if [ &quot;$id&quot; ] ; then
8847                         echo &quot;$id $module&quot;
8848                     fi
8849                 fi
8850             fi
8851         done
8852     )
8853     echo
8854 fi
8855 &lt;/pre&gt;
8856
8857 &lt;p&gt;This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
8858 well.&lt;/p&gt;
8859 </description>
8860         </item>
8861
8862         <item>
8863                 <title>The video format most supported in web browsers?</title>
8864                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html</link>
8865                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html</guid>
8866                 <pubDate>Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
8867                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
8868 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
8869 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
8870 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
8871 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
8872 the Wikipedia article on
8873 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video&quot;&gt;HTML5 video&lt;/a&gt;,
8874 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
8875 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
8876 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
8877 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
8878 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
8879 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
8880 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
8881 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
8882 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
8883 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
8884 Safari can install plugins to get it.&lt;/p&gt;
8885
8886 &lt;p&gt;To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
8887 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
8888 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
8889 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
8890 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt;, we provide first fallback to a
8891 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
8892 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
8893 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an &lt;a
8894 href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/&quot;&gt;example
8895 from last week&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
8896
8897 &lt;p&gt;The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
8898 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
8899 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
8900 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
8901 was without royalties and license terms, check out
8902 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/&quot;&gt;H.264 – Not The Kind Of
8903 Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Simon Phipps.&lt;/p&gt;
8904
8905 &lt;p&gt;A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
8906 available from
8907 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos&quot;&gt;the
8908 Xiph.org wiki&lt;/a&gt;, if you want to have a look.  I&#39;m not aware of a
8909 similar list for WebM nor H.264.&lt;/p&gt;
8910
8911 &lt;p&gt;Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
8912 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
8913 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
8914 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.&lt;/p&gt;
8915 </description>
8916         </item>
8917
8918         <item>
8919                 <title>Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt;</title>
8920                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html</link>
8921                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html</guid>
8922                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
8923                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I discovered
8924 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome&quot;&gt;via
8925 digi.no&lt;/a&gt; that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
8926 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html&quot;&gt;yesterday
8927 announced&lt;/a&gt; plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; in
8928 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a &quot;completely
8929 open&quot; codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
8930 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
8931 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/&quot;&gt;H.264 – Not The Kind Of
8932 Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  It is not free of cost for creators of video
8933 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
8934 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
8935 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
8936 on the Google announcement is available from
8937 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome&quot;&gt;OSnews&lt;/a&gt;.
8938 A good read. :)&lt;/p&gt;
8939
8940 &lt;p&gt;Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
8941 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
8942 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
8943 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
8944 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
8945 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
8946 browsers support H.264, and others support
8947 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theora.org/&quot;&gt;Ogg Theora&lt;/a&gt; and
8948 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmproject.org/&quot;&gt;WebM&lt;/a&gt;
8949 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diracvideo.org/&quot;&gt;Dirac&lt;/a&gt; is not really an option
8950 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
8951 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
8952 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
8953 Wikipedia keep &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video&quot;&gt;an
8954 updated summary&lt;/a&gt; of the current browser support.&lt;/p&gt;
8955
8956 &lt;p&gt;Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
8957 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
8958 &lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions&quot;&gt;presents
8959 the mind set&lt;/a&gt; of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
8960 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
8961 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM&quot;&gt;presenting
8962 the issues with H.264&lt;/a&gt;. Both are worth a read.&lt;/p&gt;
8963
8964 &lt;p&gt;Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn&#39;t free,
8965 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
8966 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
8967 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm&quot;&gt;todays
8968 blog post&lt;/a&gt;, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
8969 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
8970 browser while still allowing plugins.&lt;/p&gt;
8971
8972 &lt;p&gt;I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
8973 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
8974 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
8975 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
8976 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
8977 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
8978 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.&lt;/p&gt;
8979
8980 &lt;p&gt;An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
8981 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
8982 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
8983 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
8984 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
8985 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
8986 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
8987 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
8988 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
8989 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
8990 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
8991 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
8992 I guess time will tell.&lt;/p&gt;
8993
8994 &lt;p&gt;Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
8995 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html&quot;&gt;more
8996 background and information on the move&lt;/a&gt; it a blog post yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;
8997 </description>
8998         </item>
8999
9000         <item>
9001                 <title>What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</title>
9002                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html</link>
9003                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html</guid>
9004                 <pubDate>Thu, 30 Dec 2010 23:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
9005                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After trying to
9006 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html&quot;&gt;compare
9007 Ogg Theora&lt;/a&gt; to
9008 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;the Digistan
9009 definition&lt;/a&gt; of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
9010 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
9011 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
9012 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
9013 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
9014 reasonable time frame, I will need help.&lt;/p&gt;
9015
9016 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with this work, please visit
9017 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse&quot;&gt;the
9018 wiki pages I have set up for this&lt;/a&gt;, and let me know that you want
9019 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
9020 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
9021 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
9022 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).&lt;/p&gt;
9023
9024 &lt;p&gt;The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
9025 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)&lt;/p&gt;
9026 </description>
9027         </item>
9028
9029         <item>
9030                 <title>The many definitions of a open standard</title>
9031                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html</link>
9032                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html</guid>
9033                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
9034                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
9035 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;Free and
9036 Open Standard&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
9037 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term &quot;Open Standard&quot; has
9038 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
9039 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
9040 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
9041 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.&lt;/p&gt;
9042
9043 &lt;p&gt;But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
9044 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
9045 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
9046 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
9047 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard&quot;&gt;wikipedia
9048 page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
9049
9050 &lt;p&gt;First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
9051 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
9052 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
9053 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
9054 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
9055 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
9056 specification on equal terms.&lt;/p&gt;
9057
9058 &lt;blockquote&gt;
9059
9060 &lt;p&gt;The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
9061 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
9062 open standard:&lt;/p&gt;
9063
9064 &lt;ul&gt;
9065
9066 &lt;li&gt;The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
9067 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
9068 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
9069 (consensus or majority decision etc.).&lt;/li&gt;
9070
9071 &lt;li&gt;The standard has been published and the standard specification
9072 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
9073 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
9074 nominal fee.&lt;/li&gt;
9075
9076 &lt;li&gt;The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
9077 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
9078 free basis.&lt;/li&gt;
9079
9080 &lt;li&gt;There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.&lt;/li&gt;
9081
9082 &lt;/ul&gt;
9083 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
9084
9085 &lt;p&gt;Another one originates from my friends over at
9086 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dkuug.dk/&quot;&gt;DKUUG&lt;/a&gt;, who coined and gathered
9087 support for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaben-standard.dk/&quot;&gt;this
9088 definition&lt;/a&gt; in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
9089 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm&quot;&gt;their
9090 definition of a open standard&lt;/a&gt;.  Another from a different part of
9091 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.&lt;/p&gt;
9092
9093 &lt;blockquote&gt;
9094
9095 &lt;p&gt;En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:&lt;/p&gt;
9096
9097 &lt;ol&gt;
9098
9099 &lt;li&gt;Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
9100 tilgængelig.&lt;/li&gt;
9101
9102 &lt;li&gt;Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
9103 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.&lt;/li&gt;
9104
9105 &lt;li&gt;Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
9106 &quot;standardiseringsorganisation&quot;) via en åben proces.&lt;/li&gt;
9107
9108 &lt;/ol&gt;
9109
9110 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
9111
9112 &lt;p&gt;Then there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html&quot;&gt;the
9113 definition&lt;/a&gt; from Free Software Foundation Europe.&lt;/p&gt;
9114
9115 &lt;blockquote&gt;
9116
9117 &lt;p&gt;An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is&lt;/p&gt;
9118
9119 &lt;ol&gt;
9120
9121 &lt;li&gt;subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
9122 manner equally available to all parties;&lt;/li&gt;
9123
9124 &lt;li&gt;without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
9125 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
9126 Standard themselves;&lt;/li&gt;
9127
9128 &lt;li&gt;free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
9129 any party or in any business model;&lt;/li&gt;
9130
9131 &lt;li&gt;managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
9132 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
9133 parties;&lt;/li&gt;
9134
9135 &lt;li&gt;available in multiple complete implementations by competing
9136 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
9137 parties.&lt;/li&gt;
9138
9139 &lt;/ol&gt;
9140
9141 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
9142
9143 &lt;p&gt;A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
9144 its
9145 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf&quot;&gt;Open
9146 Standards Checklist&lt;/a&gt; with a fairly detailed description.&lt;/p&gt;
9147
9148 &lt;blockquote&gt;
9149 &lt;p&gt;Creation and Management of an Open Standard
9150
9151 &lt;ul&gt;
9152
9153 &lt;li&gt;Its development and management process must be collaborative and
9154   democratic:
9155
9156          &lt;ul&gt;
9157
9158          &lt;li&gt;Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
9159             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
9160             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
9161             and managed.&lt;/li&gt;
9162
9163          &lt;li&gt;The processes must be documented and, through a known
9164             method, can be changed through input from all
9165             participants.&lt;/li&gt;
9166
9167          &lt;li&gt;The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
9168             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.&lt;/li&gt;
9169
9170          &lt;li&gt;Development and management should strive for consensus,
9171             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.&lt;/li&gt;
9172
9173          &lt;li&gt;The standard specification must be open to extensive
9174             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
9175             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.&lt;/li&gt;
9176
9177          &lt;/ul&gt;
9178
9179 &lt;/li&gt;
9180
9181 &lt;/ul&gt;
9182
9183 &lt;p&gt;Use and Licensing of an Open Standard&lt;/p&gt;
9184 &lt;ul&gt;
9185
9186 &lt;li&gt;The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
9187   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
9188   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
9189   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
9190   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.&lt;/li&gt;
9191
9192 &lt;li&gt; The standard must not contain any proprietary &quot;hooks&quot; that create
9193   a technical or economic barriers&lt;/li&gt;
9194
9195 &lt;li&gt;Faithful implementations of the standard must
9196   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
9197   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
9198   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
9199   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
9200   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
9201   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
9202   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
9203   intended to function.&lt;/li&gt;
9204
9205 &lt;li&gt;It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
9206   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
9207   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.&lt;/li&gt;
9208
9209 &lt;li&gt;It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
9210   fees; also known as &quot;royalty free&quot;), worldwide, non-exclusive and
9211   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
9212   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
9213   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
9214   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
9215   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
9216   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
9217
9218       &lt;ul&gt;
9219
9220       &lt;li&gt; May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
9221         licensees&#39; patent claims essential to practice that standard
9222         (also known as a reciprocity clause)&lt;/li&gt;
9223
9224       &lt;li&gt; May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
9225         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
9226         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
9227         &quot;defensive suspension&quot; clause)&lt;/li&gt;
9228
9229       &lt;li&gt; The same licensing terms are available to every potential
9230         licensor&lt;/li&gt;
9231
9232       &lt;/ul&gt;
9233 &lt;/li&gt;
9234
9235 &lt;li&gt;The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
9236   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
9237   or restricted licensing terms&lt;/li&gt;
9238
9239 &lt;/ul&gt;
9240
9241 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
9242
9243 &lt;p&gt;It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
9244 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
9245 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
9246 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
9247 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
9248 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
9249 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
9250 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
9251 Standards.&lt;/p&gt;
9252 </description>
9253         </item>
9254
9255         <item>
9256                 <title>Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</title>
9257                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html</link>
9258                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html</guid>
9259                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 20:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
9260                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;The
9261 Digistan definition&lt;/a&gt; of a free and open standard reads like this:&lt;/p&gt;
9262
9263 &lt;blockquote&gt;
9264
9265 &lt;p&gt;The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
9266 as follows:&lt;/p&gt;
9267
9268 &lt;ol&gt;
9269
9270 &lt;li&gt;A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
9271 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
9272 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.&lt;/li&gt;
9273
9274 &lt;li&gt;The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
9275 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
9276 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
9277 parties.&lt;/li&gt;
9278
9279 &lt;li&gt;The standard has been published and the standard specification
9280 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
9281 distribute, and use it freely.&lt;/li&gt;
9282
9283 &lt;li&gt;The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
9284 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.&lt;/li&gt;
9285
9286 &lt;li&gt;There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.&lt;/li&gt;
9287
9288 &lt;/ol&gt;
9289
9290 &lt;p&gt;The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
9291 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
9292 products based on the standard.&lt;/p&gt;
9293 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
9294
9295 &lt;p&gt;For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
9296 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
9297 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
9298 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
9299 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html&quot;&gt;in
9300 July 2009&lt;/a&gt;, for those that want to see some background information.
9301 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
9302 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.&lt;/p&gt;
9303
9304 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Free from vendor capture?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9305
9306 &lt;p&gt;As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
9307 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
9308 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/&quot;&gt;Xiph foundation&lt;/A&gt; is such vendor, but
9309 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
9310 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
9311 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
9312 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
9313 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I&#39;ve
9314 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
9315 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
9316 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
9317 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
9318 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
9319 specification.  But it seem unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;
9320
9321 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9322
9323 &lt;p&gt;Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
9324 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
9325 controlled by a single vendor, it isn&#39;t, but I have not found any
9326 documentation indicating this.&lt;/p&gt;
9327
9328 &lt;p&gt;According to
9329 &lt;a href=&quot;http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf&quot;&gt;a report&lt;/a&gt;
9330 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
9331 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
9332 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
9333 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
9334 report is correct.&lt;/p&gt;
9335
9336 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Specification freely available?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9337
9338 &lt;p&gt;The specification for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/&quot;&gt;Ogg
9339 container format&lt;/a&gt; and both the
9340 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/&quot;&gt;Vorbis&lt;/a&gt; and
9341 &lt;a href=&quot;http://theora.org/doc/&quot;&gt;Theora&lt;/a&gt; codeces are available on
9342 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
9343
9344 &lt;blockquote&gt;
9345
9346 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
9347 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
9348 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
9349 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
9350 specification compliance.
9351
9352 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
9353
9354 &lt;p&gt;The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
9355 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt&quot;&gt;RFC 3533&lt;/a&gt;, and
9356 this is the term:&lt;p&gt;
9357
9358 &lt;blockquote&gt;
9359
9360 &lt;p&gt;This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
9361 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
9362 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
9363 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
9364 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
9365 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
9366 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
9367 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
9368 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
9369 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
9370 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
9371 translate it into languages other than English.&lt;/p&gt;
9372
9373 &lt;p&gt;The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
9374 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.&lt;/p&gt;
9375 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
9376
9377 &lt;p&gt;All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
9378 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
9379 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
9380 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
9381 requirement for the Digistan definition.&lt;/p&gt;
9382
9383 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Royalty-free?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9384
9385 &lt;p&gt;There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
9386 Theora format.
9387 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782&quot;&gt;MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;
9388 and
9389 &lt;a href=&quot;http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit&quot;&gt;Steve
9390 Jobs&lt;/a&gt; in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
9391 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
9392 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
9393 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
9394 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
9395 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
9396 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.&lt;/p&gt;
9397
9398 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No constraints on re-use?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9399
9400 &lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.&lt;/p&gt;
9401
9402 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
9403
9404 &lt;p&gt;3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
9405 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
9406 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
9407 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
9408 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
9409 this.&lt;/p&gt;
9410
9411 &lt;p&gt;It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
9412 see if they are free and open standards.&lt;/p&gt;
9413 </description>
9414         </item>
9415
9416         <item>
9417                 <title>The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</title>
9418                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html</link>
9419                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html</guid>
9420                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
9421                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago
9422 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece&quot;&gt;an
9423 article&lt;/a&gt; in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
9424 2.0 of
9425 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework&quot;&gt;European
9426 Interoperability Framework&lt;/a&gt; has been successfully lobbied by the
9427 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
9428 Nothing very surprising there, given
9429 &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe&quot;&gt;earlier
9430 reports&lt;/a&gt; on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
9431 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
9432 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt&quot;&gt;an
9433 open standard from version 1&lt;/a&gt; was very good, and something I
9434 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
9435 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;the
9436 definition from Digistan&lt;/A&gt;.  Version 2 have removed the open
9437 standard definition from its content.&lt;/p&gt;
9438
9439 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
9440 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
9441 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
9442 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
9443 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
9444 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html&quot;&gt;my
9445 source&lt;/a&gt; to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
9446 background information about that story is available in
9447 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; from
9448 Linux Journal in 2002.&lt;/p&gt;
9449
9450 &lt;blockquote&gt;
9451 &lt;p&gt;Lima, 8th of April, 2002&lt;br&gt;
9452 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ&lt;br&gt;
9453 General Manager of Microsoft Perú&lt;/p&gt;
9454
9455 &lt;p&gt;Dear Sir:&lt;/p&gt;
9456
9457 &lt;p&gt;First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.&lt;/p&gt;
9458
9459 &lt;p&gt;While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.&lt;/p&gt;
9460
9461 &lt;p&gt;With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call &quot;open source software&quot; is what the Bill defines as &quot;free software&quot;, since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call &quot;commercial software&quot; is what the Bill defines as &quot;proprietary&quot; or &quot;unfree&quot;, given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.&lt;/p&gt;
9462
9463 &lt;p&gt;It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:&lt;/p&gt;
9464
9465 &lt;p&gt;
9466 &lt;ul&gt;
9467 &lt;li&gt;Free access to public information by the citizen. &lt;/li&gt;
9468 &lt;li&gt;Permanence of public data. &lt;/li&gt;
9469 &lt;li&gt;Security of the State and citizens.&lt;/li&gt;
9470 &lt;/ul&gt;
9471 &lt;/p&gt;
9472
9473 &lt;p&gt;To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.&lt;/p&gt;
9474
9475 &lt;p&gt;To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
9476
9477 &lt;p&gt;To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. &lt;/p&gt;
9478
9479 &lt;p&gt;In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.&lt;/p&gt;
9480
9481 &lt;p&gt;In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.&lt;/p&gt;
9482
9483
9484 &lt;p&gt;From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:&lt;br&gt;
9485 &lt;li&gt;the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software&lt;/li&gt;
9486 &lt;li&gt;the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software&lt;/li&gt;
9487 &lt;li&gt;the law does not specify which concrete software to use&lt;/li&gt;
9488 &lt;li&gt;the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought&lt;/li&gt;
9489 &lt;li&gt;the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.&lt;/li&gt;
9490
9491 &lt;/p&gt;
9492
9493 &lt;p&gt;What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.&lt;/p&gt;
9494
9495 &lt;p&gt;We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.&lt;/p&gt;
9496
9497 &lt;p&gt;As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:&lt;/p&gt;
9498
9499 &lt;p&gt;Firstly, you point out that: &quot;1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
9500
9501 &lt;p&gt;This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;
9502
9503 &lt;p&gt;The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).&lt;/p&gt;
9504
9505 &lt;p&gt;The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.&lt;/p&gt;
9506
9507 &lt;p&gt;It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.&lt;/p&gt;
9508
9509 &lt;p&gt;By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office &quot;suite&quot;, under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.&lt;/p&gt;
9510
9511 &lt;p&gt;To continue; you note that:&quot; 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
9512
9513 &lt;p&gt;This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding &quot;non-competitive ... practices.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
9514
9515 &lt;p&gt;Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them &quot;a priori&quot;, but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.&lt;/p&gt;
9516
9517 &lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.&lt;/p&gt;
9518
9519 &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms&#39; expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.&lt;/p&gt;
9520
9521 &lt;p&gt;It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: &quot;update your software to the new version&quot; (at the user&#39;s expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider&#39;s judgment alone, are &quot;old&quot;; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays &quot;trapped&quot; in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).&lt;/p&gt;
9522
9523 &lt;p&gt;You add: &quot;3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
9524
9525 &lt;p&gt;I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.&lt;/p&gt;
9526
9527 &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.&lt;/p&gt;
9528
9529 &lt;p&gt;In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.&lt;/p&gt;
9530
9531 &lt;p&gt;In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.&lt;/p&gt;
9532
9533 &lt;p&gt;It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of &quot;ad hoc&quot; software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.&lt;/p&gt;
9534
9535 &lt;p&gt;With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.&lt;/p&gt;
9536
9537 &lt;p&gt;Your letter continues: &quot;4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
9538
9539 &lt;p&gt;Alluding in an abstract way to &quot;the dangers this can bring&quot;, without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.&lt;/p&gt;
9540
9541 &lt;p&gt;On security:&lt;/p&gt;
9542
9543 &lt;p&gt;National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or &quot;bugs&quot; (in programmers&#39; slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;
9544
9545 &lt;p&gt;What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.&lt;/p&gt;
9546
9547 &lt;p&gt;It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.&lt;/p&gt;
9548
9549 &lt;p&gt;In respect of the guarantee:&lt;/p&gt;
9550
9551 &lt;p&gt;As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the &quot;End User License Agreement&quot; of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS&#39;&#39;, that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.&lt;/p&gt;
9552
9553 &lt;p&gt;On Intellectual Property:&lt;/p&gt;
9554
9555 &lt;p&gt;Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one&#39;s own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).&lt;/p&gt;
9556
9557 &lt;p&gt;You go on to say that: &quot;The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
9558
9559 &lt;p&gt;This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).&lt;/p&gt;
9560
9561 &lt;p&gt;Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.&lt;/p&gt;
9562
9563 &lt;p&gt;If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.&lt;/p&gt;
9564
9565 &lt;p&gt;You continue: &quot;6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
9566
9567 &lt;p&gt;This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.&lt;/p&gt;
9568
9569 &lt;p&gt;In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software (&quot;blue screens of death&quot;, malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.&lt;/p&gt;
9570
9571 &lt;p&gt;You further state that: &quot;7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
9572
9573 &lt;p&gt;I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.&lt;/p&gt;
9574
9575 &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.&lt;/p&gt;
9576
9577 &lt;p&gt;You continue: &quot;8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
9578
9579 &lt;p&gt;Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.&lt;/p&gt;
9580
9581 &lt;p&gt;The second argument refers to &quot;problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector&quot; This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
9582
9583 &lt;p&gt;You then say that: &quot;9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
9584
9585 &lt;p&gt;This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.&lt;/p&gt;
9586
9587 &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.&lt;/p&gt;
9588
9589 &lt;p&gt;You continue by observing that: &quot;10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
9590
9591 &lt;p&gt;It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.&lt;/p&gt;
9592
9593 &lt;p&gt;What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.&lt;/p&gt;
9594
9595 &lt;p&gt;You go on to say that: &quot;11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
9596
9597 &lt;p&gt;This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.&lt;/p&gt;
9598
9599 &lt;p&gt;You then state that: &quot;12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
9600
9601 &lt;p&gt;In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn&#39;t have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That&#39;s exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.&lt;/p&gt;
9602
9603 &lt;p&gt;You end with a rhetorical question: &quot;13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn&#39;t it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
9604
9605 &lt;p&gt;We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.&lt;/p&gt;
9606
9607 &lt;p&gt;The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.&lt;/p&gt;
9608
9609 &lt;p&gt;In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.&lt;/p&gt;
9610
9611 &lt;p&gt;I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.&lt;/p&gt;
9612
9613 &lt;p&gt;Cordially,&lt;br&gt;
9614 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ&lt;br&gt;
9615 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.&lt;/p&gt;
9616 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
9617 </description>
9618         </item>
9619
9620         <item>
9621                 <title>Officeshots still going strong</title>
9622                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html</link>
9623                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html</guid>
9624                 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 09:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
9625                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago I
9626 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html&quot;&gt;wrote
9627 a bit&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;OfficeShots&lt;/a&gt;,
9628 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
9629 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.&lt;/p&gt;
9630
9631 &lt;p&gt;I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
9632 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
9633 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
9634 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
9635 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
9636 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
9637 got such a great test tool available.&lt;/p&gt;
9638 </description>
9639         </item>
9640
9641         <item>
9642                 <title>How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</title>
9643                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</link>
9644                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</guid>
9645                 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
9646                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have spent at work here at the &lt;a
9647 href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt; testing if the new
9648 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
9649 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
9650 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
9651 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
9652 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
9653 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
9654 university.&lt;/p&gt;
9655
9656 &lt;p&gt;My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
9657 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
9658 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
9659 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
9660 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
9661 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
9662 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
9663 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.&lt;/p&gt;
9664
9665 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
9666 I perform on a new model.&lt;/p&gt;
9667
9668 &lt;ul&gt;
9669
9670 &lt;li&gt;Is PXE installation working?  I&#39;m testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
9671 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
9672 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.&lt;/li&gt;
9673
9674 &lt;li&gt;Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
9675 installation, X.org is working.&lt;/li&gt;
9676
9677 &lt;li&gt;Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
9678 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
9679 reported by the program.&lt;/li&gt;
9680
9681 &lt;li&gt;Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
9682 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
9683 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
9684 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
9685 normally test this by playing
9686 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ &quot;&gt;a HTML5
9687 video&lt;/a&gt; in Firefox/Iceweasel.&lt;/li&gt;
9688
9689 &lt;li&gt;Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
9690 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
9691
9692 &lt;li&gt;Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
9693 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.&lt;/li&gt;
9694
9695 &lt;li&gt;Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
9696 picture from the v4l device show up.&lt;/li&gt;
9697
9698 &lt;li&gt;Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
9699 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
9700 few.&lt;/li&gt;
9701
9702 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
9703 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
9704 notice this.&lt;/li&gt;
9705
9706 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I&#39;m testing if the
9707 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
9708 resume.&lt;/li&gt;
9709
9710 &lt;li&gt;For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
9711 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
9712 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
9713 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
9714 not.&lt;/li&gt;
9715
9716 &lt;li&gt;Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
9717 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
9718 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
9719 existence.&lt;/li&gt;
9720
9721 &lt;/ul&gt;
9722
9723 &lt;p&gt;By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
9724 for the HP machines I am testing.  I&#39;m not done yet, so I will report
9725 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
9726 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
9727 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
9728 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
9729 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
9730 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.&lt;/p&gt;
9731 </description>
9732         </item>
9733
9734         <item>
9735                 <title>Some thoughts on BitCoins</title>
9736                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</link>
9737                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</guid>
9738                 <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
9739                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As I continue to explore
9740 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;, I&#39;ve starting to wonder
9741 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
9742 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.&lt;/p&gt;
9743
9744 &lt;p&gt;One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
9745 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
9746 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
9747 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
9748 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
9749 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
9750 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
9751 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;
9752 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
9753 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&quot;&gt;1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3&lt;/a&gt;
9754 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
9755 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&quot;&gt;1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt&lt;/A&gt;
9756 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
9757 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
9758 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
9759 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
9760 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I&#39;m told
9761 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
9762 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
9763 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.&lt;/p&gt;
9764
9765 &lt;p&gt;In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
9766 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
9767 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
9768 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
9769 If the Skolelinux foundation
9770 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;SLX
9771 Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
9772 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
9773 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
9774 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
9775 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
9776 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
9777 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.&lt;/p&gt;
9778
9779 &lt;p&gt;For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
9780 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
9781 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
9782 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
9783 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
9784 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
9785 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
9786 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
9787 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
9788 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
9789 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I&#39;m sure they
9790 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
9791 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
9792 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
9793 currencies.&lt;/p&gt;
9794
9795 &lt;p&gt;The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
9796 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
9797 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
9798 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The &quot;winner&quot; get 50
9799 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
9800 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
9801 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
9802 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
9803 BitCoins.  Check out
9804 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/&quot;&gt;BitCoin Pool&lt;/a&gt;
9805 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
9806 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
9807 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
9808 yet.&lt;/p&gt;
9809
9810 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-12-15: Found an &lt;a
9811 href=&quot;http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi&quot;&gt;interesting
9812 criticism&lt;/a&gt; of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
9813 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
9814 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.&lt;/p&gt;
9815 </description>
9816         </item>
9817
9818         <item>
9819                 <title>Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</title>
9820                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</link>
9821                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</guid>
9822                 <pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
9823                 <description>&lt;p&gt;With this weeks lawless
9824 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html&quot;&gt;governmental
9825 attacks&lt;/a&gt; on Wikileak and
9826 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech&quot;&gt;free
9827 speech&lt;/a&gt;, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
9828 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
9829 A blog post from
9830 &lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;Simon
9831 Phipps on bitcoin&lt;/a&gt; reminded me about a project that a friend of
9832 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon&#39;s example, and get
9833 involved with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;BitCoin&lt;/a&gt;.  I got
9834 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
9835 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
9836 for helping me remember BitCoin.&lt;/p&gt;
9837
9838 &lt;p&gt;So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
9839 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
9840 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
9841 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
9842 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
9843 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
9844 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
9845 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
9846 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/578157&quot;&gt;will get the package into
9847 Debian&lt;/a&gt; soon.&lt;/p&gt;
9848
9849 &lt;p&gt;Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
9850 There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/trade&quot;&gt;companies accepting
9851 bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; when selling services and goods, and there are even
9852 currency &quot;stock&quot; markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
9853 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
9854 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
9855 you can even get
9856 &lt;a href=&quot;https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/&quot;&gt;some for free&lt;/a&gt; (0.05
9857 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
9858 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/&quot;&gt;BitcoinWatch&lt;/a&gt; to keep an eye
9859 on the current exchange rates.&lt;/p&gt;
9860
9861 &lt;p&gt;As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
9862 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
9863 donations to the address
9864 &lt;b&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/b&gt;.  Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;
9865 </description>
9866         </item>
9867
9868         <item>
9869                 <title>Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</title>
9870                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html</link>
9871                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html</guid>
9872                 <pubDate>Thu, 9 Dec 2010 19:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
9873                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
9874 student assosiation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.robotica.no/&quot;&gt;Robotica
9875 Osloensis&lt;/a&gt; at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
9876 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
9877 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
9878 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
9879 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
9880 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
9881 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
9882 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
9883 operational.&lt;/p&gt;
9884
9885 &lt;p&gt;The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
9886 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
9887 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
9888 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thingiverse.com/&quot;&gt;Thingiverse&lt;/a&gt;.  I even got
9889 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
9890 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
9891 very cool 3D scanner.&lt;/p&gt;
9892 </description>
9893         </item>
9894
9895         <item>
9896                 <title>Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</title>
9897                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html</link>
9898                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html</guid>
9899                 <pubDate>Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
9900                 <description>&lt;p&gt;On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9901 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo&quot;&gt;development
9902 gathering&lt;/a&gt; in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
9903 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
9904 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
9905 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.&lt;/p&gt;
9906
9907 &lt;p&gt;On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
9908 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
9909 will hold its
9910 &lt;a href=&quot;http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010&quot;&gt;General Assembly
9911 for 2010&lt;/a&gt;.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
9912 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
9913 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
9914 vote this year.&lt;/p&gt;
9915 </description>
9916         </item>
9917
9918         <item>
9919                 <title>Why isn&#39;t Debian Edu using VLC?</title>
9920                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</link>
9921                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html</guid>
9922                 <pubDate>Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
9923                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
9924 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
9925 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
9926 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
9927 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
9928 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
9929 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
9930 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.&lt;p&gt;
9931
9932 &lt;p&gt;But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
9933 mplayer in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
9934 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
9935 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
9936 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
9937 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
9938 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;last
9939 tested the browser plugins&lt;/a&gt; available in Debian, the VLC plugin
9940 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
9941 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
9942 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.&lt;/P&gt;
9943
9944 &lt;p&gt;While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
9945 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
9946 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
9947 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
9948 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
9949 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
9950 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
9951 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
9952 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
9953 what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;
9954 </description>
9955         </item>
9956
9957         <item>
9958                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</title>
9959                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</link>
9960                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html</guid>
9961                 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
9962                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
9963 upgrade testing of the
9964 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
9965 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt; to do &lt;tt&gt;apt-get autoremove&lt;/tt&gt; when using apt-get.
9966 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
9967 can now present the updated result from today:&lt;/p&gt;
9968
9969 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
9970
9971 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
9972
9973 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
9974   apache2.2-bin
9975   aptdaemon
9976   baobab
9977   binfmt-support
9978   browser-plugin-gnash
9979   cheese-common
9980   cli-common
9981   cups-pk-helper
9982   dmz-cursor-theme
9983   empathy
9984   empathy-common
9985   freedesktop-sound-theme
9986   freeglut3
9987   gconf-defaults-service
9988   gdm-themes
9989   gedit-plugins
9990   geoclue
9991   geoclue-hostip
9992   geoclue-localnet
9993   geoclue-manual
9994   geoclue-yahoo
9995   gnash
9996   gnash-common
9997   gnome
9998   gnome-backgrounds
9999   gnome-cards-data
10000   gnome-codec-install
10001   gnome-core
10002   gnome-desktop-environment
10003   gnome-disk-utility
10004   gnome-screenshot
10005   gnome-search-tool
10006   gnome-session-canberra
10007   gnome-system-log
10008   gnome-themes-extras
10009   gnome-themes-more
10010   gnome-user-share
10011   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
10012   gstreamer0.10-tools
10013   gtk2-engines
10014   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
10015   gtk2-engines-smooth
10016   hamster-applet
10017   libapache2-mod-dnssd
10018   libapr1
10019   libaprutil1
10020   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
10021   libaprutil1-ldap
10022   libart2.0-cil
10023   libboost-date-time1.42.0
10024   libboost-python1.42.0
10025   libboost-thread1.42.0
10026   libchamplain-0.4-0
10027   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
10028   libcheese-gtk18
10029   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
10030   libcryptui0
10031   libdiscid0
10032   libelf1
10033   libepc-1.0-2
10034   libepc-common
10035   libepc-ui-1.0-2
10036   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
10037   libfreerdp0
10038   libgconf2.0-cil
10039   libgdata-common
10040   libgdata7
10041   libgdu-gtk0
10042   libgee2
10043   libgeoclue0
10044   libgexiv2-0
10045   libgif4
10046   libglade2.0-cil
10047   libglib2.0-cil
10048   libgmime2.4-cil
10049   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
10050   libgnome2.24-cil
10051   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
10052   libgpod-common
10053   libgpod4
10054   libgtk2.0-cil
10055   libgtkglext1
10056   libgtksourceview2.0-common
10057   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
10058   libmono-addins0.2-cil
10059   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
10060   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
10061   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
10062   libmono-posix2.0-cil
10063   libmono-security2.0-cil
10064   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
10065   libmono-system2.0-cil
10066   libmtp8
10067   libmusicbrainz3-6
10068   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
10069   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
10070   libopal3.6.8
10071   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
10072   libpt2.6.7
10073   libpython2.6
10074   librpm1
10075   librpmio1
10076   libsdl1.2debian
10077   libsrtp0
10078   libssh-4
10079   libtelepathy-farsight0
10080   libtelepathy-glib0
10081   libtidy-0.99-0
10082   media-player-info
10083   mesa-utils
10084   mono-2.0-gac
10085   mono-gac
10086   mono-runtime
10087   nautilus-sendto
10088   nautilus-sendto-empathy
10089   p7zip-full
10090   pkg-config
10091   python-aptdaemon
10092   python-aptdaemon-gtk
10093   python-axiom
10094   python-beautifulsoup
10095   python-bugbuddy
10096   python-clientform
10097   python-coherence
10098   python-configobj
10099   python-crypto
10100   python-cupshelpers
10101   python-elementtree
10102   python-epsilon
10103   python-evolution
10104   python-feedparser
10105   python-gdata
10106   python-gdbm
10107   python-gst0.10
10108   python-gtkglext1
10109   python-gtksourceview2
10110   python-httplib2
10111   python-louie
10112   python-mako
10113   python-markupsafe
10114   python-mechanize
10115   python-nevow
10116   python-notify
10117   python-opengl
10118   python-openssl
10119   python-pam
10120   python-pkg-resources
10121   python-pyasn1
10122   python-pysqlite2
10123   python-rdflib
10124   python-serial
10125   python-tagpy
10126   python-twisted-bin
10127   python-twisted-conch
10128   python-twisted-core
10129   python-twisted-web
10130   python-utidylib
10131   python-webkit
10132   python-xdg
10133   python-zope.interface
10134   remmina
10135   remmina-plugin-data
10136   remmina-plugin-rdp
10137   remmina-plugin-vnc
10138   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
10139   rhythmbox-plugins
10140   rpm-common
10141   rpm2cpio
10142   seahorse-plugins
10143   shotwell
10144   software-center
10145   system-config-printer-udev
10146   telepathy-gabble
10147   telepathy-mission-control-5
10148   telepathy-salut
10149   tomboy
10150   totem
10151   totem-coherence
10152   totem-mozilla
10153   totem-plugins
10154   transmission-common
10155   xdg-user-dirs
10156   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
10157   xserver-xephyr
10158 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10159
10160 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
10161
10162 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10163   cheese
10164   ekiga
10165   eog
10166   epiphany-extensions
10167   evolution-exchange
10168   fast-user-switch-applet
10169   file-roller
10170   gcalctool
10171   gconf-editor
10172   gdm
10173   gedit
10174   gedit-common
10175   gnome-games
10176   gnome-games-data
10177   gnome-nettool
10178   gnome-system-tools
10179   gnome-themes
10180   gnuchess
10181   gucharmap
10182   guile-1.8-libs
10183   libavahi-ui0
10184   libdmx1
10185   libgalago3
10186   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
10187   libgtksourceview2.0-0
10188   liblircclient0
10189   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
10190   libspeexdsp1
10191   libsvga1
10192   rhythmbox
10193   seahorse
10194   sound-juicer
10195   system-config-printer
10196   totem-common
10197   transmission-gtk
10198   vinagre
10199   vino
10200 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10201
10202 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
10203
10204 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10205   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10206 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10207
10208 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
10209
10210 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10211 [nothing]
10212 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10213
10214 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
10215
10216 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
10217
10218 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10219   ksmserver
10220 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10221
10222 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
10223
10224 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10225   kwin
10226   network-manager-kde
10227 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10228
10229 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
10230
10231 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10232   arts
10233   dolphin
10234   freespacenotifier
10235   google-gadgets-gst
10236   google-gadgets-xul
10237   kappfinder
10238   kcalc
10239   kcharselect
10240   kde-core
10241   kde-plasma-desktop
10242   kde-standard
10243   kde-window-manager
10244   kdeartwork
10245   kdeartwork-emoticons
10246   kdeartwork-style
10247   kdeartwork-theme-icon
10248   kdebase
10249   kdebase-apps
10250   kdebase-workspace
10251   kdebase-workspace-bin
10252   kdebase-workspace-data
10253   kdeeject
10254   kdelibs
10255   kdeplasma-addons
10256   kdeutils
10257   kdewallpapers
10258   kdf
10259   kfloppy
10260   kgpg
10261   khelpcenter4
10262   kinfocenter
10263   konq-plugins-l10n
10264   konqueror-nsplugins
10265   kscreensaver
10266   kscreensaver-xsavers
10267   ktimer
10268   kwrite
10269   libgle3
10270   libkde4-ruby1.8
10271   libkonq5
10272   libkonq5-templates
10273   libnetpbm10
10274   libplasma-ruby
10275   libplasma-ruby1.8
10276   libqt4-ruby1.8
10277   marble-data
10278   marble-plugins
10279   netpbm
10280   nuvola-icon-theme
10281   plasma-dataengines-workspace
10282   plasma-desktop
10283   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
10284   plasma-runners-addons
10285   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
10286   plasma-scriptengine-python
10287   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
10288   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
10289   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
10290   plasma-scriptengines
10291   plasma-wallpapers-addons
10292   plasma-widget-folderview
10293   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
10294   ruby
10295   sweeper
10296   update-notifier-kde
10297   xscreensaver-data-extra
10298   xscreensaver-gl
10299   xscreensaver-gl-extra
10300   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
10301 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10302
10303 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
10304
10305 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10306   ark
10307   google-gadgets-common
10308   google-gadgets-qt
10309   htdig
10310   kate
10311   kdebase-bin
10312   kdebase-data
10313   kdepasswd
10314   kfind
10315   klipper
10316   konq-plugins
10317   konqueror
10318   ksysguard
10319   ksysguardd
10320   libarchive1
10321   libcln6
10322   libeet1
10323   libeina-svn-06
10324   libggadget-1.0-0b
10325   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
10326   libgps19
10327   libkdecorations4
10328   libkephal4
10329   libkonq4
10330   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
10331   libkscreensaver5
10332   libksgrd4
10333   libksignalplotter4
10334   libkunitconversion4
10335   libkwineffects1a
10336   libmarblewidget4
10337   libntrack-qt4-1
10338   libntrack0
10339   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
10340   libplasmaclock4a
10341   libplasmagenericshell4
10342   libprocesscore4a
10343   libprocessui4a
10344   libqalculate5
10345   libqedje0a
10346   libqtruby4shared2
10347   libqzion0a
10348   libruby1.8
10349   libscim8c2a
10350   libsmokekdecore4-3
10351   libsmokekdeui4-3
10352   libsmokekfile3
10353   libsmokekhtml3
10354   libsmokekio3
10355   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
10356   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
10357   libsmokekparts3
10358   libsmokektexteditor3
10359   libsmokekutils3
10360   libsmokenepomuk3
10361   libsmokephonon3
10362   libsmokeplasma3
10363   libsmokeqtcore4-3
10364   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
10365   libsmokeqtgui4-3
10366   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
10367   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
10368   libsmokeqtscript4-3
10369   libsmokeqtsql4-3
10370   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
10371   libsmokeqttest4-3
10372   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
10373   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
10374   libsmokeqtxml4-3
10375   libsmokesolid3
10376   libsmokesoprano3
10377   libtaskmanager4a
10378   libtidy-0.99-0
10379   libweather-ion4a
10380   libxklavier16
10381   libxxf86misc1
10382   okteta
10383   oxygencursors
10384   plasma-dataengines-addons
10385   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
10386   plasma-widget-lancelot
10387   plasma-widgets-addons
10388   plasma-widgets-workspace
10389   polkit-kde-1
10390   ruby1.8
10391   systemsettings
10392   update-notifier-common
10393 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10394
10395 &lt;p&gt;Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
10396 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
10397 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
10398 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.&lt;/p&gt;
10399 </description>
10400         </item>
10401
10402         <item>
10403                 <title>Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</title>
10404                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</link>
10405                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html</guid>
10406                 <pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
10407                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Most of the computers in use by the
10408 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux project&lt;/a&gt;
10409 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
10410 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
10411 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
10412 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
10413 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
10414 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
10415 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.&lt;/p&gt;
10416
10417 &lt;p&gt;I found
10418 &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM&quot;&gt;a
10419 nice recipe&lt;/a&gt; to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
10420 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
10421 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
10422 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
10423 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.&lt;/p&gt;
10424
10425 &lt;pre&gt;
10426 #!/bin/sh
10427
10428 # Based on
10429 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
10430
10431 set -e
10432 set -x
10433
10434 if [ -z &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
10435     echo &quot;Usage: $0 &amp;lt;hostname&amp;gt;&quot;
10436     exit 1
10437 else
10438     host=&quot;$1&quot;
10439 fi
10440
10441 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
10442     echo &quot;error: unable to find LVM volume for $host&quot;
10443     exit 1
10444 fi
10445
10446 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
10447 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
10448 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk &#39;{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }&#39;)
10449 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
10450
10451 img=$host.img
10452 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
10453 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
10454
10455 parted $img mklabel msdos
10456 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
10457 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
10458 parted $img set 1 boot on
10459
10460 modprobe dm-mod
10461 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
10462 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
10463
10464 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
10465 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
10466 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
10467
10468 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
10469 losetup -d /dev/loop0
10470 &lt;/pre&gt;
10471
10472 &lt;p&gt;The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
10473 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.&lt;/p&gt;
10474
10475 &lt;p&gt;After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
10476 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
10477 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
10478 seem to work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
10479 </description>
10480         </item>
10481
10482         <item>
10483                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</title>
10484                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</link>
10485                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html</guid>
10486                 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 22:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
10487                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m still running upgrade testing of the
10488 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;Lenny
10489 Gnome and KDE Desktop&lt;/a&gt;, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
10490 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.&lt;/p&gt;
10491
10492 &lt;p&gt;I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
10493 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
10494 can see if anything should be changed.&lt;/p&gt;
10495
10496 &lt;p&gt;This is for Gnome:&lt;/p&gt;
10497
10498 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
10499
10500 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10501   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
10502   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
10503   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
10504   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
10505   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
10506   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
10507   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
10508   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
10509   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
10510   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
10511   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
10512   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
10513   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
10514   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
10515   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
10516   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
10517   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
10518   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
10519   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
10520   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
10521   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
10522   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
10523   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
10524   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
10525   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
10526   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
10527   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
10528   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
10529   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
10530   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
10531   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
10532   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10533   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
10534   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
10535   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
10536   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
10537   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
10538   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
10539   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
10540   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
10541   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
10542   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
10543   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
10544   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
10545   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
10546   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
10547   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
10548   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
10549   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
10550   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
10551   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
10552   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
10553   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
10554   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
10555   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
10556   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
10557   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
10558   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
10559   zip
10560 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10561
10562 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
10563
10564 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10565   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
10566   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
10567   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
10568   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
10569   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
10570   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
10571   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
10572   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
10573   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
10574   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
10575   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
10576   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10577   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
10578   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10579   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
10580   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
10581   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
10582   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
10583   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
10584   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
10585   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
10586   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
10587   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
10588   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
10589   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
10590   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
10591   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
10592   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
10593   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
10594 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10595
10596 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
10597
10598 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10599   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10600 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10601
10602 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
10603
10604 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10605 [nothing]
10606 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10607
10608 &lt;p&gt;This is for KDE:&lt;/p&gt;
10609
10610 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
10611
10612 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10613   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
10614   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
10615   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
10616   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
10617   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
10618   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
10619   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
10620   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
10621   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
10622   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
10623   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
10624   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
10625   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
10626   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
10627   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
10628   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
10629   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
10630   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
10631   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
10632   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
10633   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
10634   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
10635   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
10636   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
10637   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
10638   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
10639   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
10640   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
10641   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
10642   ttf-sazanami-gothic
10643 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10644
10645 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
10646
10647 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10648   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
10649   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
10650   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
10651   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
10652   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
10653   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
10654   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
10655   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
10656   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
10657   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
10658   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
10659   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
10660   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
10661   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
10662   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
10663   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
10664   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
10665   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
10666   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
10667   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
10668   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
10669   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
10670   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
10671   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
10672   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
10673   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
10674   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
10675   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
10676   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
10677   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
10678   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
10679   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
10680   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
10681 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10682
10683 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
10684
10685 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10686   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
10687   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
10688   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
10689   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
10690   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
10691   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
10692   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
10693 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10694
10695 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
10696
10697 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
10698   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
10699 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
10700 </description>
10701         </item>
10702
10703         <item>
10704                 <title>Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</title>
10705                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</link>
10706                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html</guid>
10707                 <pubDate>Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
10708                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Answering
10709 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html&quot;&gt;the
10710 call from the Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; for
10711 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnashdev.org:8010&quot;&gt;buildbot&lt;/a&gt; slaves to test the
10712 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
10713 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
10714 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
10715 releases out more often.&lt;/p&gt;
10716
10717 &lt;p&gt;As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
10718 I have considered setting up a &lt;a
10719 href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/&quot;&gt;Debian/kfreebsd&lt;/a&gt;
10720 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
10721 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
10722 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
10723 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
10724 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
10725 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
10726 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
10727 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
10728 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
10729 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
10730 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.&lt;/p&gt;
10731 </description>
10732         </item>
10733
10734         <item>
10735                 <title>Debian in 3D</title>
10736                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</link>
10737                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html</guid>
10738                 <pubDate>Tue, 9 Nov 2010 16:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
10739                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10740
10741 &lt;p&gt;3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
10742 3D linked in from
10743 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/&quot;&gt;the
10744 thingiverse blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
10745 </description>
10746         </item>
10747
10748         <item>
10749                 <title>Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</title>
10750                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html</link>
10751                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html</guid>
10752                 <pubDate>Sun, 7 Nov 2010 11:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
10753                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
10754 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; DVD, which is
10755 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
10756 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
10757 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
10758 working using this DVD.&lt;/p&gt;
10759
10760 &lt;p&gt;The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
10761 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
10762 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
10763 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
10764 a patch for debian-cd in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/601203&quot;&gt;BTS
10765 report #601203&lt;/a&gt; to do this, and since this change was applied to
10766 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.&lt;/p&gt;
10767
10768 &lt;p&gt;A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
10769 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
10770 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
10771 Debian archive.&lt;/p&gt;
10772
10773 &lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
10774 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
10775 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
10776 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
10777 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
10778 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
10779 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
10780 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
10781 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
10782 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
10783 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
10784 free X driver should work.&lt;/p&gt;
10785
10786 &lt;p&gt;With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
10787 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
10788 DVD more useful again.&lt;/p&gt;
10789 </description>
10790         </item>
10791
10792         <item>
10793                 <title>Software updates 2010-10-24</title>
10794                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</link>
10795                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html</guid>
10796                 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Oct 2010 22:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
10797                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Some updates.&lt;/p&gt;
10798
10799 &lt;p&gt;My &lt;a href=&quot;http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2&quot;&gt;gnash pledge&lt;/a&gt; to
10800 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
10801 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
10802 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
10803 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
10804 :)&lt;/p&gt;
10805
10806 &lt;p&gt;On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
10807 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
10808 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
10809 It is called
10810 &lt;a href=&quot;http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html&quot;&gt;kcov&lt;/a&gt;,
10811 and can be used using &lt;tt&gt;kcov &amp;lt;directory&amp;gt; &amp;lt;binary&amp;gt;&lt;/tt&gt;.
10812 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
10813 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
10814 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
10815 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.&lt;/p&gt;
10816
10817 &lt;p&gt;Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for &lt;a
10818 href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html&quot;&gt;a
10819 new alpha release of Debian Edu&lt;/a&gt;, and just published the second
10820 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
10821 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
10822 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
10823 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
10824 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
10825 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
10826 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.&lt;/p&gt;
10827 </description>
10828         </item>
10829
10830         <item>
10831                 <title>Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</title>
10832                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html</link>
10833                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html</guid>
10834                 <pubDate>Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
10835                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getgnash.org/&quot;&gt;The Gnash project&lt;/a&gt; is the
10836 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
10837 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
10838 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
10839 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
10840 AVM2 flash files.&lt;/p&gt;
10841
10842 &lt;p&gt;To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
10843 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2&quot;&gt;a pledge&lt;/a&gt; with the
10844 following text:&lt;/P&gt;
10845
10846 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
10847
10848   &lt;p&gt;&quot;I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
10849   only if 10 other people will do the same.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
10850
10851   &lt;p&gt;- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer&lt;/p&gt;
10852
10853   &lt;p&gt;Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010&lt;/p&gt;
10854
10855   &lt;p&gt;The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
10856   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
10857   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
10858   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
10859   days. The project web page is available from
10860   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
10861   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
10862   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.&lt;/p&gt;
10863
10864   &lt;p&gt;The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
10865   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
10866   to get this to happen.&lt;/p&gt;
10867
10868   &lt;p&gt;The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
10869   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32&quot;&gt;http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;
10870
10871 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10872
10873 &lt;p&gt;I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
10874 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
10875 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
10876 :)&lt;/p&gt;
10877 </description>
10878         </item>
10879
10880         <item>
10881                 <title>First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</title>
10882                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html</link>
10883                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html</guid>
10884                 <pubDate>Sat, 9 Oct 2010 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
10885                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
10886 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
10887 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
10888 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
10889 I&#39;ve started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
10890 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
10891 robots.&lt;/p&gt;
10892
10893 &lt;p&gt;The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
10894 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
10895 a few less important features too.&lt;/p&gt;
10896
10897 &lt;p&gt;Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
10898 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
10899 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
10900 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.&lt;/p&gt;
10901
10902 &lt;p&gt;Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
10903 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
10904 source or binary package:&lt;/p&gt;
10905
10906 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
10907 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz&quot;&gt;libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
10908 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc&quot;&gt;libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
10909 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb&quot;&gt;libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
10910 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10911
10912 &lt;p&gt;If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
10913 please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
10914 </description>
10915         </item>
10916
10917         <item>
10918                 <title>Links for 2010-10-03</title>
10919                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html</link>
10920                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html</guid>
10921                 <pubDate>Sun, 3 Oct 2010 22:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
10922                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
10923
10924 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars&quot;&gt;There
10925 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
10926
10927 &lt;li&gt;Scanner looking under clothes
10928 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/&quot;&gt;has
10929 already been misused at Heathrow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;
10930
10931 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell&quot;&gt;Landell
10932 Webcasting&lt;/a&gt; - interesting alternative for
10933 &lt;ahref=&quot;http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/&quot;&gt;DVSwitch&lt;/a&gt; with
10934 simple setup.
10935
10936 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
10937 </description>
10938         </item>
10939
10940         <item>
10941                 <title>Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</title>
10942                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html</link>
10943                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html</guid>
10944                 <pubDate>Thu, 9 Sep 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
10945                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
10946 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
10947 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
10948 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
10949 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
10950 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
10951 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
10952 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
10953 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
10954
10955 &lt;p&gt;On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
10956 written:&lt;/p&gt;
10957
10958 &lt;blockquote&gt;
10959 &lt;p&gt;This product is licensed under AT&amp;T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
10960 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
10961 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
10962 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
10963 AT&amp;T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.&lt;/p&gt;
10964
10965 &lt;p&gt;No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
10966 standard.&lt;/p&gt;
10967 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
10968
10969 &lt;p&gt;In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
10970 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
10971 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
10972 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.&lt;/p&gt;
10973
10974 &lt;p&gt;This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
10975 read
10976 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA&quot;&gt;Why
10977 Our Civilization&#39;s Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
10978 MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
10979 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/&quot;&gt;H.264 Is Not
10980 The Sort Of Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Simon Phipps to learn more about
10981 the issue.  The solution is to support the
10982 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and
10983 open standards&lt;/a&gt; for video, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theora.org/&quot;&gt;Ogg
10984 Theora&lt;/a&gt;, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.&lt;/p&gt;
10985 </description>
10986         </item>
10987
10988         <item>
10989                 <title>Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</title>
10990                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</link>
10991                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
10992                 <pubDate>Sat, 4 Sep 2010 10:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
10993                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote&quot;&gt;Debian
10994 popularity-contest numbers&lt;/a&gt;, the adobe-flashplugin package the
10995 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
10996 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
10997 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
10998 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
10999 installed.&lt;/p&gt;
11000
11001 &lt;p&gt;In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
11002 («&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&amp;do=view&amp;target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf&quot;&gt;Skolelinux
11003 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
11004 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs&lt;/a&gt;»), one of the most important problems
11005 schools experienced with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian
11006 Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
11007 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
11008 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
11009 good reason to stay with Windows.&lt;/p&gt;
11010
11011 &lt;p&gt;I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
11012 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
11013 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
11014 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
11015 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
11016 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
11017 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
11018 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
11019 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
11020 pages they want to visit.&lt;/p&gt;
11021
11022 &lt;p&gt;This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
11023 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
11024 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
11025 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
11026 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
11027 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
11028 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
11029 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
11030 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
11031 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
11032 accept the new package into Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
11033 </description>
11034         </item>
11035
11036         <item>
11037                 <title>My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</title>
11038                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html</link>
11039                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html</guid>
11040                 <pubDate>Wed, 1 Sep 2010 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
11041                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
11042 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
11043 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
11044 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
11045 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
11046 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
11047 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
11048 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
11049 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
11050 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
11051 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
11052 drive around.&lt;/p&gt;
11053
11054 &lt;p&gt;The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
11055 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:&lt;/p&gt;
11056
11057 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11058 use Spykee;
11059 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
11060 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
11061 my $spykee = Spykee-&gt;new();
11062 $spykee-&gt;contact($host, &quot;admin&quot;, &quot;admin&quot;);
11063 $spykee-&gt;left();
11064 sleep 2;
11065 $spykee-&gt;right();
11066 sleep 2;
11067 $spykee-&gt;forward();
11068 sleep 2;
11069 $spykee-&gt;back();
11070 sleep 2;
11071 $spykee-&gt;stop();
11072 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11073
11074 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
11075 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
11076 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I&#39;ve implemented several of
11077 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
11078 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
11079 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
11080 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
11081 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
11082 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
11083 going. :).&lt;/p&gt;
11084
11085 &lt;p&gt;Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
11086 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
11087 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/&quot;&gt;the NUUG wiki&lt;/a&gt; for
11088 those that want to check back later to find it.&lt;/p&gt;
11089 </description>
11090         </item>
11091
11092         <item>
11093                 <title>Broken hard link handling with sshfs</title>
11094                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html</link>
11095                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html</guid>
11096                 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
11097                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
11098 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html&quot;&gt;previous
11099 post about sshfs&lt;/a&gt;.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
11100 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
11101 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
11102 a link count &gt;1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
11103 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:&lt;/p&gt;
11104
11105 &lt;pre&gt;
11106 % ln foo bar
11107 ln: creating hard link `bar&#39; =&gt; `foo&#39;: Function not implemented
11108 %
11109 &lt;/pre&gt;
11110
11111 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
11112 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
11113 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
11114 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
11115 nevertheless. :)&lt;/p&gt;
11116
11117 &lt;p&gt;The latest version of the file system test code is available via
11118 git from
11119 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&quot;&gt;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11120 </description>
11121         </item>
11122
11123         <item>
11124                 <title>Broken umask handling with sshfs</title>
11125                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html</link>
11126                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html</guid>
11127                 <pubDate>Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
11128                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My file system sematics program
11129 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html&quot;&gt;presented
11130 a few days ago&lt;/a&gt; is very useful to verify that a file system can
11131 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I&#39;m
11132 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
11133 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
11134 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
11135 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
11136 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
11137 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
11138 script:&lt;/p&gt;
11139
11140 &lt;pre&gt;
11141 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
11142   mode_t retval = 0;
11143   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
11144   if (-1 != fd) {
11145     unlink(name);
11146     struct stat statbuf;
11147     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &amp;statbuf)) {
11148       retval = statbuf.st_mode &amp; 0x1ff;
11149     }
11150     close(fd);
11151   }
11152   return retval;
11153 }
11154
11155 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
11156 int test_umask(void) {
11157   printf(&quot;info: testing umask effect on file creation\n&quot;);
11158
11159   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
11160   mode_t newmode;
11161   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode(&quot;foobar&quot;, 0666))) {
11162     printf(&quot;  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n&quot;,
11163            newmode);
11164   }
11165   umask(007);
11166   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode(&quot;foobar&quot;, 0666))) {
11167     printf(&quot;  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n&quot;,
11168            newmode);
11169   }
11170
11171   umask (orig_umask);
11172   return 0;
11173 }
11174
11175 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
11176   [...]
11177   test_umask();
11178   return 0;
11179 }
11180 &lt;/pre&gt;
11181
11182 &lt;p&gt;Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:&lt;/p&gt;
11183
11184 &lt;pre&gt;
11185 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
11186 info: testing symlink creation
11187 info: testing subdirectory creation
11188 info: testing fcntl locking
11189   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
11190   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
11191   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
11192   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
11193   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
11194   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
11195 info: testing umask effect on file creation
11196 &lt;/pre&gt;
11197
11198 &lt;p&gt;When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
11199 result:&lt;/p&gt;
11200
11201 &lt;pre&gt;
11202 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
11203 info: testing symlink creation
11204 info: testing subdirectory creation
11205 info: testing fcntl locking
11206   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
11207   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
11208   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
11209   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
11210   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
11211   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
11212 info: testing umask effect on file creation
11213   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
11214   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
11215 &lt;/pre&gt;
11216
11217 &lt;p&gt;So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
11218 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
11219 directory.&lt;/p&gt;
11220
11221 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
11222 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/594498&quot;&gt;BTS report #594498&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11223
11224 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
11225 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
11226 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&quot;&gt;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
11227 </description>
11228         </item>
11229
11230         <item>
11231                 <title>Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</title>
11232                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html</link>
11233                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html</guid>
11234                 <pubDate>Sun, 15 Aug 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
11235                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I found the notes from Rob Weir on
11236 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html&quot;&gt;how
11237 to crush dissent&lt;/a&gt; matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
11238 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
11239 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
11240 long time.&lt;/p&gt;
11241 </description>
11242         </item>
11243
11244         <item>
11245                 <title>No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</title>
11246                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html</link>
11247                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html</guid>
11248                 <pubDate>Mon, 9 Aug 2010 20:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
11249                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
11250 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
11251 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
11252 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
11253 generated configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
11254
11255 &lt;p&gt;What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
11256 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
11257 without any manual configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
11258
11259 &lt;p&gt;This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
11260 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
11261 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
11262 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
11263 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
11264 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
11265 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
11266 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
11267 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
11268 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
11269 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
11270 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
11271 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
11272 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
11273 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
11274 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
11275 use.&lt;/p&gt;
11276
11277 &lt;p&gt;How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
11278 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
11279 working properly out of the box:&lt;/p&gt;
11280
11281 &lt;ul&gt;
11282 &lt;li&gt;IP address/netmask and DNS server.&lt;/li&gt;
11283 &lt;li&gt;Web proxy URL.&lt;/li&gt;
11284 &lt;li&gt;LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).&lt;/li&gt;
11285 &lt;li&gt;Kerberos server for PAM password checking.&lt;/li&gt;
11286 &lt;li&gt;SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)&lt;/li&gt;
11287 &lt;li&gt;Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)&lt;/li&gt;
11288 &lt;li&gt;Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)&lt;/li&gt;
11289 &lt;/ul&gt;
11290
11291 &lt;p&gt;(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)&lt;/p&gt;
11292
11293 &lt;p&gt;The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
11294 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
11295 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
11296 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
11297 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
11298
11299 &lt;p&gt;The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
11300 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
11301 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
11302 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
11303 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
11304 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
11305 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
11306 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.&lt;/p&gt;
11307
11308 &lt;p&gt;The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
11309 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
11310 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
11311 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
11312 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
11313 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
11314 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
11315 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
11316 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
11317 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
11318 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
11319 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
11320 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
11321 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I&#39;ve been unable to find a way to
11322 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
11323 current DNS domain is used.&lt;/p&gt;
11324
11325 &lt;p&gt;For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
11326 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
11327 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
11328 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
11329 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
11330 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
11331 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
11332 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
11333 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
11334 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
11335 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
11336 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
11337 should switch those to use sssd too?&lt;/p&gt;
11338
11339 &lt;p&gt;The user&#39;s SMB mount point for the network home directory is
11340 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
11341 consulted to look for the user&#39;s LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
11342 attribute is used if found.  If it isn&#39;t found, the home directory
11343 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
11344 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
11345 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
11346 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
11347 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
11348 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
11349 do for now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
11350
11351 &lt;p&gt;This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
11352 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
11353 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
11354 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
11355 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
11356 yet.&lt;/p&gt;
11357
11358 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
11359 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
11360
11361 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
11362 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
11363 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
11364 implement it for Debian Edu. :)&lt;/p&gt;
11365 </description>
11366         </item>
11367
11368         <item>
11369                 <title>Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</title>
11370                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html</link>
11371                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html</guid>
11372                 <pubDate>Sun, 8 Aug 2010 21:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
11373                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
11374 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
11375 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
11376 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
11377 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
11378 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
11379 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.&lt;/p&gt;
11380
11381 &lt;p&gt;The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
11382 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
11383 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
11384 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
11385 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
11386 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
11387 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.&lt;/p&gt;
11388
11389 &lt;p&gt;As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
11390 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
11391 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
11392 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
11393 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:&lt;/p&gt;
11394
11395 &lt;pre&gt;
11396 /*
11397  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
11398  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
11399  * directory.
11400  * License: GPL v2 or later
11401  *
11402  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
11403  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
11404 */
11405
11406 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
11407 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
11408 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
11409
11410 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
11411
11412 #include &amp;lt;errno.h&gt;
11413 #include &amp;lt;fcntl.h&gt;
11414 #include &amp;lt;stdio.h&gt;
11415 #include &amp;lt;string.h&gt;
11416 #include &amp;lt;stdlib.h&gt;
11417 #include &amp;lt;sys/file.h&gt;
11418 #include &amp;lt;sys/stat.h&gt;
11419 #include &amp;lt;sys/types.h&gt;
11420 #include &amp;lt;unistd.h&gt;
11421
11422 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
11423 /*
11424  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
11425  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
11426  * below.
11427  * See also &amp;lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 &gt;.
11428  */
11429 #include &amp;lt;sqlite3.h&gt;
11430 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
11431   &quot;CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); &quot;
11432 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
11433   char *zErrMsg;
11434   char *name = &quot;testsqlite.db&quot;;
11435   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
11436   unlink(name);
11437   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &amp;db);
11438   if( rc ){
11439     printf(&quot;error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n&quot;, name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
11440     sqlite3_close(db);
11441     return -1;
11442   }
11443
11444   /* create tables */
11445   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &amp;zErrMsg);
11446   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
11447     printf(&quot;error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n&quot;, zErrMsg);
11448     sqlite3_close(db);
11449     return -1;
11450   }
11451   printf(&quot;info: sqlite worked\n&quot;);
11452   sqlite3_close(db);
11453   return 0;
11454 }
11455 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
11456
11457 /*
11458  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
11459  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
11460  * done in the sqlite3 library.
11461  * See also
11462  * &amp;lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html&gt; and the
11463  * POSIX specification
11464  * &amp;lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html&gt;.
11465  */
11466 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
11467   struct flock fl;
11468   char *name = &quot;testsqlite.db&quot;;
11469   unlink(name);
11470   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
11471   printf(&quot;info: testing fcntl locking\n&quot;);
11472
11473   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
11474   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
11475   printf(&quot;  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
11476   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
11477   fl.l_len    = 1;
11478   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
11479   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
11480
11481   printf(&quot;  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826&quot;);
11482   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
11483   fl.l_len    = 510;
11484   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
11485   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
11486
11487   printf(&quot;  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
11488   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
11489   fl.l_len    = 1;
11490   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
11491   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
11492
11493   printf(&quot;  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
11494   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
11495   fl.l_len    = 1;
11496   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
11497   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
11498
11499   printf(&quot;  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826&quot;);
11500   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
11501   fl.l_len    = 510;
11502   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
11503
11504   printf(&quot;  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824&quot;);
11505   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
11506   fl.l_len    = 2;
11507   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
11508   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &amp;fl) ) printf(&quot; - error!\n&quot;); else printf(&quot;\n&quot;);
11509
11510   close(fd);
11511   return 0;
11512 }
11513
11514 /*
11515  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
11516  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
11517  * Mounting with option &#39;sync&#39; seem to solve this problem while
11518  * slowing down file operations.
11519  */
11520 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
11521 #define LEVELS 5
11522   char *path = strdup(&quot;test&quot;);
11523   char *dirs[LEVELS];
11524   int level;
11525   printf(&quot;info: testing subdirectory creation\n&quot;);
11526   for (level = 0; level &amp;lt; LEVELS; level++) {
11527     char *newpath = NULL;
11528     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
11529       printf(&quot;  error: Unable to create directory &#39;%s&#39;: %s\n&quot;,
11530              path, strerror(errno));
11531       break;
11532     }
11533     asprintf(&amp;newpath, &quot;%s/%s&quot;, path, &quot;test&quot;);
11534     free(path);
11535     path = newpath;
11536   }
11537   return 0;
11538 }
11539
11540 /*
11541  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
11542  * KDE.
11543  */
11544 int test_symlinks(void) {
11545   printf(&quot;info: testing symlink creation\n&quot;);
11546   unlink(&quot;symlink&quot;);
11547   if (-1 == symlink(&quot;file&quot;, &quot;symlink&quot;))
11548     printf(&quot;  error: Unable to create symlink\n&quot;);
11549   return 0;
11550 }
11551
11552 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
11553   printf(&quot;Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n&quot;);
11554   test_symlinks();
11555   test_subdirectory_creation();
11556 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
11557   test_sqlite_open();
11558 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
11559   test_gcompris_locking();
11560   return 0;
11561 }
11562 &lt;/pre&gt;
11563
11564 &lt;p&gt;When everything is working, it should print something like
11565 this:&lt;/p&gt;
11566
11567 &lt;pre&gt;
11568 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
11569 info: testing symlink creation
11570 info: testing subdirectory creation
11571 info: sqlite worked
11572 info: testing fcntl locking
11573   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
11574   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
11575   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
11576   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
11577   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
11578   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
11579 &lt;/pre&gt;
11580
11581 &lt;p&gt;I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
11582 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
11583 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
11584 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
11585 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
11586 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
11587 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
11588 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.&lt;/p&gt;
11589
11590 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
11591 it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
11592
11593 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
11594 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
11595 &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&quot;&gt;http://github.com/gebi/fs-test&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
11596 </description>
11597         </item>
11598
11599         <item>
11600                 <title>Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</title>
11601                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html</link>
11602                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
11603                 <pubDate>Sat, 7 Aug 2010 14:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
11604                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I
11605 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html&quot;&gt;tried
11606 to install&lt;/a&gt; a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
11607 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
11608 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
11609 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
11610 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
11611 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
11612 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
11613 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.&lt;/p&gt;
11614
11615 &lt;p&gt;With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
11616 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
11617 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
11618 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
11619 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
11620 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
11621 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
11622 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
11623 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
11624 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
11625 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
11626 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
11627 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
11628 gave it a IP address.&lt;/p&gt;
11629
11630 &lt;p&gt;The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
11631 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
11632 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
11633 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
11634 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
11635 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
11636 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
11637 uppercase version of $domain.&lt;/p&gt;
11638
11639 &lt;p&gt;So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
11640 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
11641 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
11642 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
11643 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
11644 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(&lt;/p&gt;
11645
11646 &lt;p&gt;With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
11647 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
11648 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
11649 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
11650 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
11651 with UID and GID values.&lt;/p&gt;
11652
11653 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
11654 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
11655 </description>
11656         </item>
11657
11658         <item>
11659                 <title>Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</title>
11660                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html</link>
11661                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html</guid>
11662                 <pubDate>Tue, 3 Aug 2010 23:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
11663                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
11664 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
11665 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
11666 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
11667 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
11668 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
11669 servers.&lt;/p&gt;
11670
11671 &lt;p&gt;I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
11672 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
11673 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
11674 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
11675 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
11676 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
11677 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
11678 .uio.no.&lt;/p&gt;
11679
11680 &lt;p&gt;This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
11681 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
11682 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
11683 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
11684 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
11685 university servers.&lt;/p&gt;
11686
11687 &lt;p&gt;My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
11688 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
11689 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
11690 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
11691 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
11692 uses.&lt;/p&gt;
11693 </description>
11694         </item>
11695
11696         <item>
11697                 <title>Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</title>
11698                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</link>
11699                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html</guid>
11700                 <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
11701                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I discovered this while doing
11702 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;automated
11703 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze&lt;/a&gt;.  A few packages
11704 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
11705 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
11706 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.&lt;/p&gt;
11707
11708 &lt;p&gt;An example is from todays
11709 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt&quot;&gt;upgrade
11710 of KDE using aptitude&lt;/a&gt;.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
11711 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
11712 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
11713 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
11714 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
11715 because its dependencies are unavailable.&lt;/p&gt;
11716
11717 &lt;p&gt;In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:&lt;/p&gt;
11718
11719 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11720 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
11721  perl-modules depends on perl (&gt;= 5.10.1-1); however:
11722   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
11723 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
11724  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
11725 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
11726
11727 &lt;p&gt;The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
11728 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/527917&quot;&gt;reported as a bug&lt;/a&gt;, and will
11729 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
11730 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
11731 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
11732 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
11733 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
11734 of dependency loops.&lt;/p&gt;
11735
11736 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to
11737 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html&quot;&gt;the
11738 tireless effort by Bill Allombert&lt;/a&gt;, the number of circular
11739 dependencies
11740 &lt;a href=&quot;http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html&quot;&gt;left in Debian
11741 is dropping&lt;/a&gt;, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)&lt;/p&gt;
11742
11743 &lt;p&gt;Todays testing also exposed a bug in
11744 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590605&quot;&gt;update-notifier&lt;/a&gt; and
11745 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/590604&quot;&gt;different behaviour&lt;/a&gt; between
11746 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
11747 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
11748 it.&lt;/p&gt;
11749 </description>
11750         </item>
11751
11752         <item>
11753                 <title>First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</title>
11754                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html</link>
11755                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html</guid>
11756                 <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
11757                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
11758 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
11759 completed.&lt;/p&gt;
11760
11761 &lt;blockquote&gt;
11762 &lt;p&gt;This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
11763 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
11764 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
11765 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
11766 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
11767 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
11768 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
11769 language of choice, please let us know too.&lt;/p&gt;
11770
11771 &lt;p&gt;In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
11772 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
11773 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.&lt;/p&gt;
11774
11775 &lt;p&gt;The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
11776 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
11777 much.&lt;/p&gt;
11778
11779 &lt;p&gt;Changes compared to the lenny based version&lt;/p&gt;
11780
11781 &lt;ul&gt;
11782 &lt;li&gt;Everything from Debian Squeeze
11783 &lt;ul&gt;
11784   &lt;li&gt;Desktop environment KDE 4.4 =&gt; the new KDE desktop in
11785          combination with some new artwork
11786   &lt;li&gt;Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
11787   &lt;li&gt;OpenOffice.org 3.2
11788   &lt;li&gt;Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
11789   &lt;li&gt;Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
11790   &lt;li&gt;Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
11791   &lt;li&gt;Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
11792   &lt;li&gt;Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
11793   &lt;li&gt;3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
11794   &lt;li&gt;Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
11795 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
11796 &lt;li&gt;Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
11797     Enabled for:
11798 &lt;ul&gt;
11799   &lt;li&gt;PAM
11800   &lt;li&gt;LDAP
11801   &lt;li&gt;IMAP
11802   &lt;li&gt;SMTP (sender verification)
11803 &lt;/ul&gt;
11804 &lt;/li&gt;
11805 &lt;li&gt;New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.&lt;/li&gt;
11806 &lt;li&gt;Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
11807     fetched from LDAP.&lt;/li&gt;
11808 &lt;li&gt;New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.&lt;/li&gt;
11809 &lt;li&gt;General cleanup (not finished)&lt;/li&gt;
11810 &lt;/ul&gt;
11811 &lt;p&gt;The following features are not working as they should&lt;/p&gt;
11812
11813 &lt;ul&gt;
11814 &lt;li&gt;No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
11815     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
11816     for testing.&lt;/li&gt;
11817 &lt;li&gt;DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
11818     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
11819     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.&lt;/li&gt;
11820 &lt;li&gt;The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.&lt;/li&gt;
11821 &lt;li&gt;The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.&lt;/li&gt;
11822 &lt;li&gt;The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.&lt;/li&gt;
11823 &lt;li&gt;Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
11824     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.&lt;/li&gt;
11825 &lt;li&gt;The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
11826     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
11827     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.&lt;/li&gt;
11828 &lt;li&gt;Some packages lack translations. See
11829     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
11830     and help out with translations.&lt;/li&gt;
11831 &lt;/ul&gt;
11832
11833 &lt;p&gt;To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
11834
11835 &lt;ul&gt;
11836 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
11837 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
11838 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
11839 &lt;/ul&gt;
11840 &lt;p&gt;To download this multiarch dvd release you can use&lt;/p&gt;
11841
11842 &lt;ul&gt;
11843 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&quot;&gt;ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
11844 &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&quot;&gt;http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
11845 &lt;li&gt;rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
11846 &lt;/ul&gt;
11847
11848 &lt;p&gt;There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
11849 get closer to the final release.&lt;/p&gt;
11850
11851 &lt;p&gt;The MD5SUM of these images are&lt;/p&gt;
11852
11853 &lt;ul&gt;
11854 &lt;li&gt;3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
11855 &lt;li&gt;22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
11856 &lt;/ul&gt;
11857
11858 &lt;p&gt;The SHA1SUM of these images are&lt;/p&gt;
11859 &lt;ul&gt;
11860 &lt;li&gt;c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
11861 &lt;li&gt;2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso&lt;/li&gt;
11862 &lt;/ul&gt;
11863 &lt;p&gt;How to report bugs:
11864 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla&lt;/p&gt;
11865
11866 &lt;p&gt;Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org&lt;/p&gt;
11867 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
11868 </description>
11869         </item>
11870
11871         <item>
11872                 <title>One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</title>
11873                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html</link>
11874                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
11875                 <pubDate>Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
11876                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
11877 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
11878 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
11879 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
11880 getting rid of password questions one at the time.&lt;/p&gt;
11881
11882 &lt;p&gt;It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
11883 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
11884 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
11885 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
11886 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
11887 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
11888 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.&lt;/p&gt;
11889
11890 &lt;p&gt;Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
11891 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
11892 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
11893 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
11894 up. :)&lt;/p&gt;
11895
11896 &lt;p&gt;One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
11897 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
11898 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.&lt;/p&gt;
11899
11900 &lt;p&gt;We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
11901 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
11902 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
11903 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
11904 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
11905 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
11906 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
11907 release another day.&lt;/p&gt;
11908
11909 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
11910 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
11911 </description>
11912         </item>
11913
11914         <item>
11915                 <title>OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</title>
11916                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html</link>
11917                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html</guid>
11918                 <pubDate>Sun, 18 Jul 2010 16:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
11919                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Thanks to
11920 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home&quot;&gt;todays
11921 opengeodata blog entry&lt;/a&gt;, I just discovered that the
11922 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
11923 &lt;a href=&quot;http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT&quot;&gt;support
11924 for calculating routes&lt;/a&gt;.  The support is still experimental and
11925 only available from the development server, until more experience is
11926 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.&lt;/p&gt;
11927
11928 &lt;p&gt;Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
11929 was provided by &lt;a href=&quot;http://maps.cloudmade.com/&quot;&gt;Cloudmade&lt;/a&gt;,
11930 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
11931 the issue.  I&#39;ve had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
11932 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
11933 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
11934 www.openstreetmap.org front page.&lt;/p&gt;
11935 </description>
11936         </item>
11937
11938         <item>
11939                 <title>What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</title>
11940                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</link>
11941                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html</guid>
11942                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
11943                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This is a
11944 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;followup&lt;/a&gt;
11945 on my
11946 &lt;a href=&quot;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&quot;&gt;previous
11947 work&lt;/a&gt; on
11948 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html&quot;&gt;merging
11949 all&lt;/a&gt; the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
11950
11951 &lt;p&gt;As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
11952 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
11953 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
11954 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
11955
11956 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
11957 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
11958 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
11959
11960 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;powerdns&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
11961
11962 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend&quot;&gt;Clues
11963 on how to&lt;/a&gt; set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
11964 the web.
11965
11966 &lt;p&gt;PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
11967 One &quot;strict&quot; mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
11968 using the same LDAP objects, and a &quot;tree&quot; mode where the forward and
11969 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
11970 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
11971 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.&lt;/p&gt;
11972
11973 &lt;p&gt;In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
11974 base, and uses a &quot;base&quot; scoped search for the DNS name by adding
11975 &quot;dc=tjener,dc=intern,&quot; to the base with a filter for
11976 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; for the forward entry and
11977 &quot;dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,&quot; with a filter for
11978 &quot;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&quot; for the reverse entry.  For
11979 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
11980 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
11981 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
11982 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
11983 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
11984 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
11985 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
11986 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
11987 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
11988 ldapsearch commands could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
11989
11990 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
11991 ldapsearch -h ldap \
11992   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
11993   -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
11994   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
11995   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
11996   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
11997   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
11998
11999 ldapsearch -h ldap \
12000   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
12001   -s base -x &#39;(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)&#39;
12002   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
12003   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
12004   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
12005 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12006
12007 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
12008 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
12009 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
12010 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12011 also exist.&lt;/p&gt;
12012
12013 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12014 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12015 objectclass: top
12016 objectclass: dnsdomain
12017 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12018 dc: tjener
12019 arecord: 10.0.2.2
12020 associateddomain: tjener.intern
12021
12022 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12023 objectclass: top
12024 objectclass: dnsdomain2
12025 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12026 dc: 2
12027 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
12028 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
12029 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12030
12031 &lt;p&gt;In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
12032 forward DNS entries, it is doing a &quot;subtree&quot; scoped search with the
12033 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
12034 &quot;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&quot; and requests the attributes dnsttl,
12035 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
12036 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
12037 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
12038 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is &quot;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&quot;
12039 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
12040 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
12041 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
12042 instead.&lt;/p&gt;
12043
12044 &lt;p&gt;The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
12045 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
12046
12047 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12048 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
12049   &#39;(associateddomain=tjener.intern)&#39; dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
12050   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
12051   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
12052   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
12053   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
12054
12055 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
12056   &#39;(arecord=10.0.2.2)&#39; associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
12057 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12058
12059 &lt;p&gt;In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
12060 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
12061 reverse lookups.&lt;/p&gt;
12062
12063 &lt;p&gt;A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
12064 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
12065 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
12066 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
12067
12068 &lt;p&gt;The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
12069 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
12070 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.&lt;/p&gt;
12071
12072 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
12073 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
12074 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
12075 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
12076 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.&lt;/p&gt;
12077
12078 &lt;p&gt;There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
12079 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
12080 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
12081 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
12082 (zonename and relativedomainname).&lt;/p&gt;
12083
12084 &lt;p&gt;My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
12085 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
12086 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
12087 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
12088 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
12089 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):&lt;/p&gt;
12090
12091 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12092 objectclass ( some-oid NAME &#39;dnsDomainAux&#39;
12093     SUP top
12094     AUXILIARY
12095     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
12096           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
12097           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
12098           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
12099           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
12100     ))
12101 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12102
12103 &lt;p&gt;This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
12104 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
12105 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I&#39;ve sent an email to the PowerDNS
12106 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
12107 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
12108 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.&lt;/p&gt;
12109
12110 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ISC dhcp&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
12111
12112 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
12113 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
12114 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
12115 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
12116 what is needed without having to read the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
12117
12118 &lt;p&gt;In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
12119 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
12120 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
12121 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:&lt;/p&gt;
12122
12123 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12124 ldap-base-dn &quot;dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot;;
12125 ldap-dhcp-server-cn &quot;dhcp&quot;;
12126 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12127
12128 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
12129 configuration it need.  The cn &quot;dhcp&quot; is located using the given LDAP
12130 base and the filter &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))&quot;.  The
12131 search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
12132
12133 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12134 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12135 cn: dhcp
12136 objectClass: top
12137 objectClass: dhcpServer
12138 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12139 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12140
12141 &lt;p&gt;The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
12142 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
12143 is located using a base scope search with base &quot;cn=DHCP
12144 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; and filter
12145 &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))&quot;.
12146 The search result is this entry:&lt;/p&gt;
12147
12148 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12149 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12150 cn: DHCP Config
12151 objectClass: top
12152 objectClass: dhcpService
12153 objectClass: dhcpOptions
12154 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12155 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
12156 dhcpStatements: authoritative
12157 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
12158 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
12159 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
12160 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12161
12162 &lt;p&gt;Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
12163 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
12164 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
12165 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
12166 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
12167 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
12168 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
12169 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
12170 related computer objects.&lt;/p&gt;
12171
12172 &lt;p&gt;When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
12173 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
12174 scoped search with &quot;cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no&quot; as
12175 the base and &quot;(&amp;(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
12176 00:00:00:00:00:00))&quot; as the filter.  This is what a host object look
12177 like:&lt;/p&gt;
12178
12179 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12180 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12181 cn: hostname
12182 objectClass: top
12183 objectClass: dhcpHost
12184 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
12185 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
12186 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12187
12188 &lt;p&gt;There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
12189 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
12190 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
12191 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
12192 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
12193 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
12194 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
12195 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
12196 structural object class.
12197
12198 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
12199
12200 &lt;p&gt;The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
12201 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its &quot;tree&quot; mode is rigid when it
12202 come to the the LDAP structure, the &quot;strict&quot; mode is very flexible,
12203 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
12204 in the configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
12205
12206 &lt;p&gt;The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
12207 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
12208 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
12209 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
12210 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
12211 structure.&lt;/p&gt;
12212
12213 &lt;p&gt;Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
12214 this might work for Debian Edu:&lt;/p&gt;
12215
12216 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12217 ou=services
12218   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
12219     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
12220     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
12221       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
12222         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
12223     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
12224       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
12225         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
12226     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
12227       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
12228 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12229
12230 &lt;P&gt;This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
12231 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
12232 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
12233 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.&lt;/p&gt;
12234
12235 &lt;p&gt;The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
12236 like this:&lt;/p&gt;
12237
12238 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12239 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12240 dc: hostname
12241 objectClass: top
12242 objectClass: dhcpHost
12243 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12244 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
12245 associateddomain: hostname.intern
12246 arecord: 10.11.12.13
12247 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
12248 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
12249 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12250
12251 &lt;/p&gt;One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
12252 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
12253 auxiliary object class.&lt;/p&gt;
12254 </description>
12255         </item>
12256
12257         <item>
12258                 <title>Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</title>
12259                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</link>
12260                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html</guid>
12261                 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
12262                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
12263 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
12264 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
12265 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
12266 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
12267
12268 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
12269 information finally found a solution that seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
12270
12271 &lt;p&gt;The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
12272 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
12273 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
12274 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
12275 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
12276 to a slave DNS server.&lt;/p&gt;
12277
12278 &lt;p&gt;If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
12279 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
12280 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
12281 I&#39;ve written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
12282 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
12283 seem to work.&lt;/p&gt;
12284
12285 &lt;p&gt;With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
12286 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
12287 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
12288 this:&lt;/p&gt;
12289
12290 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12291   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12292   cn: hostname
12293   objectClass: dhcphost
12294   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
12295   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
12296   associateddomain: hostname.intern
12297   arecord: 10.11.12.13
12298   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
12299   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
12300   ldapconfigsound: Y
12301 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12302
12303 &lt;p&gt;The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
12304 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
12305 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
12306 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.&lt;/p&gt;
12307
12308 &lt;p&gt;I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
12309 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
12310 outside the &quot;DHCP Config&quot; subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
12311 that.  If I can&#39;t figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
12312 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
12313 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
12314 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
12315 might be a good place to put it.&lt;/p&gt;
12316
12317 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12318 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
12319 </description>
12320         </item>
12321
12322         <item>
12323                 <title>Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</title>
12324                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</link>
12325                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html</guid>
12326                 <pubDate>Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
12327                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
12328 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
12329 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
12330 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.&lt;/p&gt;
12331
12332 &lt;p&gt;Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
12333 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
12334 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
12335 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
12336 LTSP clients.&lt;/p&gt;
12337
12338 &lt;p&gt;The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
12339 in a &quot;computer&quot; LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
12340 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.&lt;/p&gt;
12341
12342 &lt;p&gt;This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
12343 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
12344 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?&lt;/p&gt;
12345
12346 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12347 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
12348 #
12349 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
12350 #
12351 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
12352 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
12353 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
12354 #
12355 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
12356 # existence of attribute names.
12357 #
12358 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
12359 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
12360 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
12361 #
12362 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
12363 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
12364 #
12365 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME &#39;ltspClientAux&#39;
12366 #     SUP top
12367 #     AUXILIARY
12368 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
12369
12370 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
12371 if [ &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; ] ; then
12372     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
12373     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk &#39;{print $5}&#39;|sort -u) ; do
12374         filter=&quot;(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))&quot;
12375         ldapsearch -h &quot;$LDAPSERVER&quot; -b &quot;$LDAPBASE&quot; -v -x &quot;$filter&quot; | \
12376             grep &#39;^ltspConfig&#39; | while read attr value ; do
12377             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
12378             attr=$(echo $attr | sed &#39;s/^ltspConfig//i&#39; | tr a-z A-Z)
12379             # bass value on to clients
12380             eval &quot;$attr=$value; export $attr&quot;
12381         done
12382     done
12383 fi
12384 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12385
12386 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
12387 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
12388 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
12389 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
12390 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
12391
12392 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12393 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
12394
12395 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
12396 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
12397 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html&quot;&gt;PC
12398 Xperience, Inc., 2000&lt;/a&gt;.  I found its
12399 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/&quot;&gt;files&lt;/a&gt; on a
12400 personal home page over at redhat.com.&lt;/p&gt;
12401 </description>
12402         </item>
12403
12404         <item>
12405                 <title>jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
12406                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
12407                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
12408                 <pubDate>Fri, 9 Jul 2010 12:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
12409                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since
12410 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html&quot;&gt;my
12411 last post&lt;/a&gt; about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
12412 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
12413 &lt;a href=&quot;http://jxplorer.org/&quot;&gt;jXplorer&lt;/a&gt; is claimed to be capable of
12414 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
12415 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
12416 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
12417 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
12418 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html&quot;&gt;available in
12419 Debian&lt;/a&gt; testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
12420 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
12421 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
12422 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.&lt;/p&gt;
12423 </description>
12424         </item>
12425
12426         <item>
12427                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</title>
12428                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</link>
12429                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html</guid>
12430                 <pubDate>Sat, 3 Jul 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
12431                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here is a short update on my &lt;a
12432 href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;my
12433 Debian Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrade testing&lt;/a&gt;.  Here is a summary of the
12434 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I&#39;m
12435 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
12436 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
12437 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; and
12438 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585716&quot;&gt;#585716&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
12439
12440 &lt;p&gt;At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
12441 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
12442 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
12443 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
12444 publish the difference.&lt;/p&gt;
12445
12446 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
12447
12448 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12449   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
12450   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
12451   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
12452   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
12453   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
12454   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
12455   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
12456   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
12457 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12458
12459 &lt;p&gt;Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude&lt;/p&gt;
12460
12461 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12462   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
12463   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
12464   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
12465   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
12466   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
12467   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
12468   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
12469   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
12470   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
12471   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
12472   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
12473   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
12474   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
12475   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
12476   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
12477   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
12478   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
12479   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
12480   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
12481   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
12482 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12483
12484 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
12485
12486 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12487   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
12488   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
12489   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12490   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12491   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
12492   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
12493   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
12494   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12495   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12496   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12497   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12498   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
12499   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
12500   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
12501   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
12502   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
12503   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
12504   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
12505   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
12506   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
12507   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
12508 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12509
12510 &lt;p&gt;Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get&lt;/p&gt;
12511
12512 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;
12513   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
12514   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
12515   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
12516 &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12517
12518 &lt;p&gt;I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
12519 &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120&quot;&gt;changed
12520 in git&lt;/a&gt; today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
12521 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
12522 the difference somewhat.
12523 </description>
12524         </item>
12525
12526         <item>
12527                 <title>Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</title>
12528                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html</link>
12529                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html</guid>
12530                 <pubDate>Thu, 1 Jul 2010 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
12531                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
12532 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
12533 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
12534 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
12535 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
12536 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
12537 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
12538 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
12539 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.&lt;/p&gt;
12540
12541 &lt;h2&gt;LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir&lt;/h2&gt;
12542
12543 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
12544 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
12545 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
12546 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
12547 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
12548 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
12549 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
12550 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
12551 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
12552 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
12553 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/568577&quot;&gt;bug #568577&lt;/a&gt; is in the
12554 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
12555 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
12556 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
12557 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.&lt;/p&gt;
12558
12559 &lt;p&gt;These packages need to be installed and configured&lt;/p&gt;
12560
12561 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12562 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
12563 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12564
12565 &lt;p&gt;The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
12566 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
12567 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
12568 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I&#39;ve been unable to get TLS
12569 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
12570 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
12571 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
12572 on how to get this working.&lt;/p&gt;
12573
12574 &lt;p&gt;Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
12575 caching until &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/485282&quot;&gt;bug #485282&lt;/a&gt;
12576 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
12577 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
12578 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
12579 instructions I found in the
12580 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/&quot;&gt;LDAP for Mobile Laptops&lt;/a&gt;
12581 instructions by Flyn Computing.&lt;/p&gt;
12582
12583 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12584         debug-level             0
12585         reload-count            unlimited
12586         paranoia                no
12587
12588         enable-cache            passwd          yes
12589         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
12590         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
12591         suggested-size          passwd          211
12592         check-files             passwd          yes
12593         persistent              passwd          yes
12594         shared                  passwd          yes
12595         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
12596         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
12597
12598         enable-cache            group           yes
12599         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
12600         negative-time-to-live   group           20
12601         suggested-size          group           211
12602         check-files             group           yes
12603         persistent              group           yes
12604         shared                  group           yes
12605         max-db-size             group           33554432
12606         auto-propagate          group           yes
12607
12608         enable-cache            hosts           no
12609         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
12610         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
12611         suggested-size          hosts           211
12612         check-files             hosts           yes
12613         persistent              hosts           yes
12614         shared                  hosts           yes
12615         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
12616
12617         enable-cache            services        yes
12618         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
12619         negative-time-to-live   services        20
12620         suggested-size          services        211
12621         check-files             services        yes
12622         persistent              services        yes
12623         shared                  services        yes
12624         max-db-size             services        33554432
12625 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12626
12627 &lt;p&gt;While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
12628 automatically like the one provided in
12629 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/496915&quot;&gt;bug #496915&lt;/a&gt;, the file
12630 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
12631 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
12632 look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
12633
12634 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12635 passwd:         files ldap
12636 group:          files ldap
12637 shadow:         files ldap
12638 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
12639 networks:       files
12640 protocols:      files
12641 services:       files
12642 ethers:         files
12643 rpc:            files
12644 netgroup:       files ldap
12645 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12646
12647 &lt;p&gt;The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
12648 shadow and netgroup.&lt;/p&gt;
12649
12650 &lt;p&gt;With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
12651 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
12652 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
12653 attributes cached.
12654
12655 &lt;h2&gt;LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
12656   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir&lt;/h2&gt;
12657
12658 &lt;p&gt;Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
12659 problems doing proper caching, I&#39;ve seen suggestions and recipes to
12660 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
12661 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
12662 discovered sssd.&lt;/p&gt;
12663
12664 &lt;h2&gt;LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser&lt;/h2&gt;
12665
12666 &lt;p&gt;A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
12667 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
12668 &lt;a href=&quot;https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/&quot;&gt;sssd&lt;/a&gt; package from Redhat.
12669 It is part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freeipa.org/&quot;&gt;FreeIPA&lt;/A&gt; project
12670 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
12671 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
12672 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
12673 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
12674 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
12675 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
12676 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html&quot;&gt;sssd package&lt;/a&gt;
12677 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
12678 version 1.2 is now in testing.
12679
12680 &lt;p&gt;These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
12681 roaming setup I want&lt;/p&gt;
12682
12683 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12684 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
12685 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12686
12687 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
12688 &lt;tt&gt;/etc/sssd/sssd.conf&lt;/tt&gt;.
12689
12690 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12691 [sssd]
12692 config_file_version = 2
12693 reconnection_retries = 3
12694 sbus_timeout = 30
12695 services = nss, pam
12696 domains = INTERN
12697
12698 [nss]
12699 filter_groups = root
12700 filter_users = root
12701 reconnection_retries = 3
12702
12703 [pam]
12704 reconnection_retries = 3
12705
12706 [domain/INTERN]
12707 enumerate = false
12708 cache_credentials = true
12709
12710 id_provider = ldap
12711 auth_provider = ldap
12712 chpass_provider = ldap
12713
12714 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
12715 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
12716 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
12717 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
12718 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12719
12720 &lt;p&gt;I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
12721 &quot;ldap_tls_reqcert = never&quot; to get it working.&lt;/p&gt;
12722
12723 &lt;p&gt;With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
12724 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
12725 modify it manually.&lt;/p&gt;
12726
12727 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12728 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
12729 </description>
12730         </item>
12731
12732         <item>
12733                 <title>LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</title>
12734                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</link>
12735                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html</guid>
12736                 <pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
12737                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
12738 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
12739 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
12740 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
12741 &lt;a href=&quot;http://luma.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;LUMA&lt;/a&gt;, which has proved to
12742 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
12743 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
12744 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
12745 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
12746 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)&lt;/p&gt;
12747
12748 &lt;p&gt;I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
12749 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
12750 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
12751 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
12752 released.&lt;/p&gt;
12753
12754 &lt;p&gt;I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
12755 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
12756 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
12757 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/&quot;&gt;ldapvi&lt;/a&gt; for that.&lt;/p&gt;
12758
12759 &lt;p&gt;If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
12760 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
12761
12762 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
12763 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html&quot;&gt;gq&lt;/a&gt; package as a
12764 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
12765 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
12766 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
12767 </description>
12768         </item>
12769
12770         <item>
12771                 <title>Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</title>
12772                 <link>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</link>
12773                 <guid isPermaLink="true">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</guid>
12774                 <pubDate>Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:35:00 +0200</pubDate>
12775                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A while back, I
12776 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html&quot;&gt;complained
12777 about the fact&lt;/a&gt; that it is not possible with the provided schemas
12778 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
12779 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.&lt;/p&gt;
12780
12781 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
12782 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
12783 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
12784 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.&lt;/p&gt;
12785
12786 &lt;p&gt;If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
12787 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
12788 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
12789 Debian Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
12790
12791 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
12792 the
12793 &lt;a href=&quot;http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00&quot;&gt;DHCP
12794 schema&lt;/a&gt; to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
12795 available today from IETF.&lt;/p&gt;
12796
12797 &lt;pre&gt;
12798 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
12799 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
12800 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
12801  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
12802         NAME &#39;dhcpHost&#39;
12803         DESC &#39;This represents information about a particular client&#39;
12804 -       SUP top
12805 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
12806         MUST cn
12807         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
12808         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT (&#39;dhcpService&#39; &#39;dhcpSubnet&#39; &#39;dhcpGroup&#39;) )
12809 &lt;/pre&gt;
12810
12811 &lt;p&gt;I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
12812 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
12813 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.&lt;/p&gt;
12814
12815 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12816 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
12817 </description>
12818         </item>
12819
12820         <item>
12821                 <title>Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</title>
12822                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</link>
12823                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html</guid>
12824                 <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
12825                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
12826 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
12827 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
12828 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
12829 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
12830 this:
12831
12832 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12833 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12834 tasksel --new-install
12835 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12836
12837 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
12838 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
12839 any output what so ever.
12840
12841 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
12842 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
12843 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
12844 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
12845 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
12846 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
12847 code like this:
12848
12849 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
12850 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12851 cmd=&quot;$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed &#39;s/debconf-apt-progress -- //&#39;)&quot;
12852 $cmd
12853 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
12854
12855 &lt;p&gt;The content of $cmd is typically something like &quot;&lt;tt&gt;aptitude -q
12856 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
12857 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
12858 ~pimportant&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;, which will install the gnome desktop task, the
12859 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
12860 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
12861 installation.&lt;/p&gt;
12862
12863 &lt;p&gt;A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
12864 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
12865 like this.&lt;/p&gt;
12866 </description>
12867         </item>
12868
12869         <item>
12870                 <title>Officeshots taking shape</title>
12871                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</link>
12872                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</guid>
12873                 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
12874                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For those of us caring about document exchange and
12875 interoperability, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;OfficeShots&lt;/a&gt;
12876 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
12877 &lt;a href=&quot;http://browsershots.org/&quot;&gt;BrowserShots&lt;/a&gt; is for web
12878 pages.&lt;/p&gt;
12879
12880 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
12881 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
12882 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
12883 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
12884 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
12885 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
12886 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
12887 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
12888 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
12889 see how the project is doing.&lt;/p&gt;
12890
12891 &lt;p&gt;Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
12892 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
12893 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
12894 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
12895 Windows.  This is great.&lt;/p&gt;
12896 </description>
12897         </item>
12898
12899         <item>
12900                 <title>Lenny-&gt;Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</title>
12901                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</link>
12902                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html</guid>
12903                 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
12904                 <description>&lt;p&gt;My
12905 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html&quot;&gt;testing
12906 of Debian upgrades&lt;/a&gt; from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I&#39;ve
12907 finally made the upgrade logs available from
12908 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&quot;&gt;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/&lt;/a&gt;.
12909 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
12910 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
12911 I will only focus on their removal plans.&lt;/p&gt;
12912
12913 &lt;p&gt;After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
12914 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
12915 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
12916 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
12917 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
12918 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
12919 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
12920 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?&lt;/p&gt;
12921
12922 &lt;p&gt;For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
12923 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
12924 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
12925 too surprising.&lt;/p&gt;
12926
12927 &lt;p&gt;I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
12928 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
12929 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
12930 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
12931 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
12932 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
12933 &#39;&lt;tt&gt;echo &gt;&gt; /proc/&lt;em&gt;pidofdpkg&lt;/em&gt;/fd/0&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; to tell dpkg to
12934 continue.&lt;/p&gt;
12935
12936 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get gnome 72&lt;/b&gt;
12937 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
12938   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
12939   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
12940   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
12941   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
12942   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
12943   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
12944   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
12945   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
12946   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
12947   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
12948   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
12949   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
12950   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
12951   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12952   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
12953   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
12954   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
12955   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
12956   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
12957   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
12958   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
12959   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
12960   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
12961   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
12962   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
12963   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
12964   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
12965   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support&lt;/p&gt;
12966
12967 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude gnome 129&lt;/b&gt;
12968
12969 &lt;br&gt;bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
12970   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
12971   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
12972   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
12973   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
12974   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
12975   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
12976   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
12977   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
12978   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
12979   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
12980   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
12981   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
12982   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
12983   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
12984   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
12985   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
12986   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
12987   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
12988   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
12989   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
12990   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
12991   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
12992   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
12993   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
12994   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
12995   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
12996   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
12997   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
12998   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
12999   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
13000   zip&lt;/p&gt;
13001
13002 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;apt-get kde 82&lt;/b&gt;
13003
13004 &lt;br&gt;cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
13005   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
13006   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
13007   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
13008   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
13009   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
13010   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
13011   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
13012   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
13013   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
13014   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
13015   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
13016   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
13017   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
13018   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13019   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
13020   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
13021   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
13022   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
13023   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
13024   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
13025   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
13026   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
13027   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
13028   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
13029   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
13030   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
13031   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
13032
13033 &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;aptitude kde 192&lt;/b&gt;
13034 &lt;br&gt;bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
13035   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
13036   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
13037   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
13038   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
13039   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
13040   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
13041   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
13042   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
13043   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
13044   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
13045   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
13046   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
13047   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
13048   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
13049   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
13050   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
13051   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
13052   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
13053   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
13054   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
13055   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
13056   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
13057   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
13058   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
13059   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
13060   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
13061   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
13062   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
13063   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
13064   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
13065   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
13066   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
13067   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
13068   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
13069   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
13070   xulrunner-1.9&lt;/p&gt;
13071
13072 </description>
13073         </item>
13074
13075         <item>
13076                 <title>Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</title>
13077                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</link>
13078                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html</guid>
13079                 <pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
13080                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
13081 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
13082 have been discovered and reported in the process
13083 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/585410&quot;&gt;#585410&lt;/a&gt; in nagios3-cgi,
13084 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584879&quot;&gt;#584879&lt;/a&gt; already fixed in
13085 enscript and &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/584861&quot;&gt;#584861&lt;/a&gt; in
13086 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
13087 am working on a script to automate the test.&lt;/p&gt;
13088
13089 &lt;p&gt;The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
13090 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
13091 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
13092 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
13093 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
13094 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).&lt;/p&gt;
13095
13096 &lt;p&gt;A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
13097 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
13098 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
13099 is created.  The bug report
13100 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/566000&quot;&gt;#566000&lt;/a&gt; make me suspect
13101 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
13102 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
13103 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
13104 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
13105 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/&quot;&gt;known
13106 issue&lt;/a&gt; and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
13107 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
13108 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
13109 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
13110 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
13111 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
13112 Debian Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
13113
13114 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
13115 script, which I call &lt;tt&gt;upgrade-test&lt;/tt&gt; for now, is doing the
13116 trick:&lt;/p&gt;
13117
13118 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13119 #!/bin/sh
13120 set -ex
13121
13122 if [ &quot;$1&quot; ] ; then
13123     desktop=$1
13124 else
13125     desktop=gnome
13126 fi
13127
13128 from=lenny
13129 to=squeeze
13130
13131 exec &amp;lt; /dev/null
13132 unset LANG
13133 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
13134 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
13135 fuser -mv .
13136 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
13137 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
13138 cat &gt; $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
13139 #!/bin/sh
13140 exit 101
13141 EOF
13142 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
13143 exit_cleanup() {
13144     umount $tmpdir/proc
13145 }
13146 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
13147 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
13148 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
13149
13150 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
13151
13152 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
13153 # to return the correct answers.
13154 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
13155     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
13156
13157 # Include the desktop and laptop task
13158 for test in desktop laptop ; do
13159     echo &gt; $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &amp;lt;&amp;lt;EOF
13160 #!/bin/sh
13161 exit 2
13162 EOF
13163     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
13164 done
13165
13166 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
13167 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
13168 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
13169 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
13170
13171 echo deb $mirror $to main &gt; $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
13172 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
13173 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
13174 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
13175 fuser -mv
13176 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13177
13178 &lt;p&gt;I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
13179 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
13180 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
13181 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
13182 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
13183 kdebase-workspace-data&lt;/p&gt;
13184
13185 &lt;p&gt;I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
13186 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
13187 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
13188 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
13189 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
13190 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
13191 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded&lt;/p&gt;
13192
13193 &lt;p&gt;I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
13194 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
13195 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
13196 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
13197 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
13198 packages.&lt;/p&gt;
13199 </description>
13200         </item>
13201
13202         <item>
13203                 <title>Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</title>
13204                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</link>
13205                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html</guid>
13206                 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
13207                 <description>&lt;p&gt;If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
13208 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
13209 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
13210 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
13211 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
13212 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
13213 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.&lt;/p&gt;
13214
13215 &lt;p&gt;With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
13216 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
13217 COLUMNS):&lt;/p&gt;
13218
13219 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13220 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
13221 previous=N
13222 PREVLEVEL=
13223 RUNLEVEL=
13224 runlevel=S
13225 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
13226 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
13227 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
13228 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13229
13230 &lt;p&gt;With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
13231 script.&lt;/p&gt;
13232
13233 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13234 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
13235 previous=N
13236 PREVLEVEL=N
13237 RUNLEVEL=S
13238 runlevel=S
13239 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13240
13241 &lt;p&gt;The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
13242 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
13243 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;
13244
13245 &lt;p&gt;For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
13246 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
13247 choice.&lt;/p&gt;
13248 </description>
13249         </item>
13250
13251         <item>
13252                 <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
13253                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
13254                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
13255                 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
13256                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Via the
13257 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html&quot;&gt;blog
13258 of Rob Weir&lt;/a&gt; I came across the very interesting essay named
13259 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf&quot;&gt;The Art of
13260 Standards Wars&lt;/a&gt; (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
13261 following the standards wars of today.&lt;/p&gt;
13262 </description>
13263         </item>
13264
13265         <item>
13266                 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</title>
13267                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</link>
13268                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html</guid>
13269                 <pubDate>Thu, 3 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
13270                 <description>&lt;p&gt;When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
13271 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
13272 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
13273 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
13274 the Skolelinux build servers:&lt;/p&gt;
13275
13276 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13277 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
13278   vendor                    count
13279   Dell Computer Corporation     1
13280     PowerEdge 1750              1
13281   IBM                           1
13282     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
13283   Intel                         2
13284   [no-dmi-info]                 3
13285 maintainer:~#
13286 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13287
13288 &lt;p&gt;The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
13289 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
13290 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
13291 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
13292 option to list the individual machines.&lt;/p&gt;
13293
13294 &lt;p&gt;A larger list is
13295 &lt;a href=&quot;http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/&quot;&gt;available from the the
13296 city of Narvik&lt;/a&gt;, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
13297 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
13298 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
13299 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
13300 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
13301 collector.&lt;/p&gt;
13302 </description>
13303         </item>
13304
13305         <item>
13306                 <title>KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</title>
13307                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</link>
13308                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html</guid>
13309                 <pubDate>Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:05:00 +0200</pubDate>
13310                 <description>&lt;p&gt;It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
13311 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
13312 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
13313 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
13314 wait.&lt;/p&gt;
13315
13316 &lt;p&gt;I came across two bugs related to this issue,
13317 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;#583312&lt;/a&gt; initially filed
13318 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
13319 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
13320 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/524751&quot;&gt;#524751&lt;/a&gt; initially filed against
13321 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.&lt;/p&gt;
13322
13323 &lt;p&gt;To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
13324 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
13325 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
13326 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
13327 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
13328 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
13329 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
13330 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.&lt;/p&gt;
13331
13332 &lt;p&gt;I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.&lt;/p&gt;
13333 </description>
13334         </item>
13335
13336         <item>
13337                 <title>Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</title>
13338                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</link>
13339                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html</guid>
13340                 <pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
13341                 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
13342 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
13343 issues are known and should be solved:
13344
13345 &lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;
13346
13347 &lt;li&gt;The wicd package seen to
13348 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/508289&quot;&gt;break NFS mounting&lt;/a&gt; and
13349 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/581586&quot;&gt;network setup&lt;/a&gt; when
13350 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
13351 seem to be on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
13352
13353 &lt;li&gt;The nvidia X driver seem to
13354 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/583312&quot;&gt;have a race condition&lt;/a&gt;
13355 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
13356 maintainer is on the case.&lt;/li&gt;
13357
13358 &lt;li&gt;The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
13359 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
13360 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/575080&quot;&gt;try to switch back&lt;/a&gt; to
13361 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
13362 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
13363 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
13364 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
13365 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.&lt;/li&gt;
13366
13367 &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
13368
13369 &lt;p&gt;All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
13370 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
13371 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
13372 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.&lt;/p&gt;
13373
13374 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13375 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13376 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
13377 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
13378
13379 &lt;p&gt;Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.&lt;/p&gt;
13380 </description>
13381         </item>
13382
13383         <item>
13384                 <title>More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</title>
13385                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</link>
13386                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html</guid>
13387                 <pubDate>Sat, 22 May 2010 21:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
13388                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
13389 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
13390 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
13391 definitely helped freeing some time.&lt;/p&gt;
13392
13393 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
13394 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
13395 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
13396 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
13397 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
13398 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
13399 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
13400 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
13401 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
13402 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
13403 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
13404 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
13405 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
13406 going to work.&lt;/p&gt;
13407
13408 &lt;p&gt;The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
13409 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
13410 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
13411 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
13412 &quot;external&quot; media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
13413 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
13414 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
13415 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
13416 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
13417 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
13418 Edu.&lt;/p&gt;
13419
13420 &lt;p&gt;To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
13421 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
13422 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
13423 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
13424 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
13425 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.&lt;/p&gt;
13426
13427 &lt;p&gt;If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
13428 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
13429 </description>
13430         </item>
13431
13432         <item>
13433                 <title>Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</title>
13434                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html</link>
13435                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html</guid>
13436                 <pubDate>Wed, 19 May 2010 19:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
13437                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
13438 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
13439 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html&quot;&gt;libpam-mklocaluser&lt;/a&gt;
13440 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
13441 into unstable.  The
13442 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html&quot;&gt;pam-python&lt;/a&gt;
13443 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
13444 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html&quot;&gt;sssd&lt;/a&gt; package
13445 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
13446 &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html&quot;&gt;libpam-ccreds&lt;/a&gt;
13447 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
13448 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.&lt;/p&gt;
13449
13450 &lt;p&gt;This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
13451 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
13452 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
13453 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
13454 for nscd in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/485282&quot;&gt;BTS report
13455 #485282&lt;/a&gt; is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
13456 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
13457 care of the caching of passwords and group information.&lt;/p&gt;
13458
13459 &lt;p&gt;I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
13460 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
13461 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
13462 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
13463 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
13464 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
13465 and I am sure we will find a good solution.&lt;/p&gt;
13466
13467 &lt;p&gt;The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
13468 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
13469 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
13470 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
13471 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
13472 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
13473 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
13474 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
13475 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
13476 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
13477 on the home directory servers.&lt;/p&gt;
13478
13479 &lt;p&gt;One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
13480 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
13481 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
13482 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
13483 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
13484 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.&lt;/p&gt;
13485
13486 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13487 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
13488 </description>
13489         </item>
13490
13491         <item>
13492                 <title>Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</title>
13493                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</link>
13494                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html</guid>
13495                 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
13496                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
13497 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
13498 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
13499 expected, if I am to believe the
13500 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
13501 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt;, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
13502 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
13503 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
13504 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
13505 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
13506 version.&lt;/p&gt;
13507
13508 More information about
13509 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
13510 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
13511 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
13512 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
13513
13514 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13515 CONCURRENCY=none
13516 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13517
13518 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13519 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13520 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
13521 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
13522 </description>
13523         </item>
13524
13525         <item>
13526                 <title>Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</title>
13527                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</link>
13528                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html</guid>
13529                 <pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
13530                 <description>&lt;p&gt;In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
13531 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary&quot;&gt;sitesummary
13532 system&lt;/a&gt; is used to keep track of the machines in the school
13533 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
13534 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
13535 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
13536 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
13537 to update the DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
13538
13539 &lt;p&gt;To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
13540 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
13541 this on the collector host:&lt;/p&gt;
13542
13543 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13544 perl -MSiteSummary -e &#39;for_all_hosts(sub { print join(&quot; &quot;, get_macaddresses(shift)), &quot;\n&quot;; });&#39;
13545 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13546
13547 &lt;p&gt;This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
13548 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.&lt;/p&gt;
13549
13550 &lt;p&gt;To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
13551 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
13552 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
13553 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
13554 written yet.&lt;/p&gt;
13555 </description>
13556         </item>
13557
13558         <item>
13559                 <title>systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</title>
13560                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</link>
13561                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html</guid>
13562                 <pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
13563                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few days a new boot system called
13564 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd&quot;&gt;systemd&lt;/a&gt;
13565 has been
13566 &lt;a href=&quot;http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html&quot;&gt;introduced&lt;/a&gt;
13567
13568 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
13569 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
13570 &lt;a href=&quot;http://upstart.ubuntu.com/&quot;&gt;upstart&lt;/a&gt;, and might prove to be
13571 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
13572 based boot system.  Tollef is
13573 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/580814&quot;&gt;in the process&lt;/a&gt; of getting
13574 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
13575 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
13576 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
13577 at the moment do not.&lt;/p&gt;
13578
13579 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
13580 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
13581 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
13582 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
13583 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
13584 way forward.&lt;/p&gt;
13585
13586 &lt;p&gt;In the mean time, based on the
13587 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html&quot;&gt;input
13588 on debian-devel@&lt;/a&gt; regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
13589 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
13590 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
13591 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
13592 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
13593 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
13594 with parallel booting enabled by default.&lt;/p&gt;
13595 </description>
13596         </item>
13597
13598         <item>
13599                 <title>Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</title>
13600                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</link>
13601                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html</guid>
13602                 <pubDate>Thu, 6 May 2010 23:25:00 +0200</pubDate>
13603                 <description>&lt;p&gt;These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
13604 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
13605 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
13606 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
13607 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
13608 based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt; is enabled, and add this line to
13609 /etc/default/rcS:&lt;/p&gt;
13610
13611 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13612 CONCURRENCY=makefile
13613 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13614
13615 &lt;p&gt;That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
13616 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
13617 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
13618 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
13619 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
13620 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
13621 make this happen.&lt;/p&gt;
13622
13623 &lt;p&gt;Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
13624 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
13625 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
13626 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
13627 the package maintainers to fix it. :)&lt;/p&gt;
13628
13629 &lt;p&gt;Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
13630 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
13631 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
13632 fix the remaining issues.&lt;/p&gt;
13633
13634 &lt;p&gt;If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
13635 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
13636 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org&quot;&gt;the
13637 list of usertagged bugs related to this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
13638 </description>
13639         </item>
13640
13641         <item>
13642                 <title>Forcing new users to change their password on first login</title>
13643                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html</link>
13644                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html</guid>
13645                 <pubDate>Sun, 2 May 2010 13:47:00 +0200</pubDate>
13646                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
13647 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
13648 change the password on the first login attempt.&lt;/p&gt;
13649
13650 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;m not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
13651 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
13652 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
13653 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
13654 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.&lt;/p&gt;
13655
13656 &lt;p&gt;A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
13657 settings in /etc/shadow:&lt;/p&gt;
13658
13659 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13660 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
13661 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
13662 Password expires                                        : never
13663 Password inactive                                       : never
13664 Account expires                                         : never
13665 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
13666 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
13667 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
13668 root@tjener:~#
13669 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13670
13671 &lt;p&gt;The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
13672 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
13673 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
13674 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
13675 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
13676 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).&lt;/p&gt;
13677
13678 &lt;p&gt;After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
13679 intended:&lt;/p&gt;
13680
13681 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
13682 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
13683 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
13684 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
13685 Password expires                                        : never
13686 Password inactive                                       : never
13687 Account expires                                         : never
13688 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
13689 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
13690 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
13691 root@tjener:~#
13692 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
13693
13694 &lt;p&gt;So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
13695 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
13696 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).&lt;/p&gt;
13697
13698 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
13699 sure only the user itself have the account password?&lt;/p&gt;
13700
13701 &lt;p&gt;If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
13702 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
13703
13704 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
13705 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
13706 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
13707 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
13708 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
13709 Squeeze, and &#39;&lt;tt&gt;chage -d 0 username&lt;/tt&gt;&#39; do work there.  I have not
13710 tested it on Lenny yet.&lt;/p&gt;
13711
13712 &lt;p&gt;Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
13713 equivalent command to expire a password is &#39;&lt;tt&gt;passwd -e
13714 username&lt;/tt&gt;&#39;, which insert zero into the date of the last password
13715 change.&lt;/p&gt;
13716 </description>
13717         </item>
13718
13719         <item>
13720                 <title>Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</title>
13721                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html</link>
13722                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html</guid>
13723                 <pubDate>Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
13724                 <description>&lt;p&gt;For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
13725 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
13726 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
13727 and go.&lt;/p&gt;
13728
13729 &lt;p&gt;Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
13730 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
13731 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
13732 The setup would consist of the following:&lt;/p&gt;
13733
13734 &lt;ul&gt;
13735
13736  &lt;li&gt;During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
13737    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
13738    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
13739    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
13740    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
13741    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
13742    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
13743    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
13744    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
13745    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
13746    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
13747    the fish protocol in KDE?&lt;/li&gt;
13748
13749  &lt;li&gt;Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
13750    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
13751    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
13752    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
13753    &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html&quot;&gt;libpam-ccreds&lt;/a&gt;
13754    or the Fedora developed
13755    &lt;a href=&quot;https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD&quot;&gt;System
13756    Security Services Daemon&lt;/a&gt; packages.&lt;/li&gt;
13757
13758  &lt;li&gt;File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
13759    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
13760    directory, using unison.&lt;/li&gt;
13761
13762  &lt;li&gt;Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
13763    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
13764    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
13765    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
13766    implemented.&lt;/li&gt;
13767
13768  &lt;li&gt;For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
13769    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.&lt;/li&gt;
13770
13771  &lt;li&gt;It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
13772    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
13773    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.&lt;/li&gt;
13774
13775 &lt;/ul&gt;
13776
13777 &lt;p&gt;I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
13778 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
13779 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
13780 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
13781 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/566718&quot;&gt;#566718&lt;/a&gt;) and nslcd (or
13782 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
13783 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
13784 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
13785 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.&lt;/p&gt;
13786
13787 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
13788 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
13789 </description>
13790         </item>
13791
13792         <item>
13793                 <title>Great book: &quot;Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future&quot;</title>
13794                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html</link>
13795                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html</guid>
13796                 <pubDate>Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
13797                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
13798 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
13799 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
13800 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
13801 book titled &quot;Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
13802 Copyright, and the Future of the Future&quot; is available with few
13803 restrictions on the web, for example from
13804 &lt;a href=&quot;http://craphound.com/content/&quot;&gt;his own site&lt;/a&gt;. I read the
13805 epub-version from
13806 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883&quot;&gt;feedbooks&lt;/a&gt; using
13807 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbreader.org/&quot;&gt;fbreader&lt;/a&gt; and my N810. I
13808 strongly recommend this book.&lt;/p&gt;
13809 </description>
13810         </item>
13811
13812         <item>
13813                 <title>Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</title>
13814                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html</link>
13815                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html</guid>
13816                 <pubDate>Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
13817                 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/&quot;&gt;Yesterdays
13818 NUUG presentation&lt;/a&gt; about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
13819 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
13820 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
13821 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
13822 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
13823 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
13824 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
13825 users and cryptographic keys instead.&lt;/p&gt;
13826
13827 &lt;p&gt;A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
13828 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
13829 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
13830 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
13831 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.&lt;/p&gt;
13832
13833 &lt;p&gt;A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
13834 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?&lt;/p&gt;
13835
13836 &lt;p&gt;Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
13837 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
13838 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
13839 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
13840 to work properly.&lt;/p&gt;
13841
13842 &lt;p&gt;I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
13843 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
13844 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
13845 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
13846 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
13847 time.&lt;/p&gt;
13848
13849 &lt;p&gt;If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
13850 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
13851 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
13852 up in a few days.&lt;/p&gt;
13853 </description>
13854         </item>
13855
13856         <item>
13857                 <title>After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</title>
13858                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html</link>
13859                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html</guid>
13860                 <pubDate>Sat, 6 Mar 2010 18:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
13861                 <description>&lt;p&gt;6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
13862 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
13863 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
13864 package in 2004 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugs.debian.org/230422&quot;&gt;#230422&lt;/a&gt;),
13865 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
13866 Today, this finally paid off.&lt;/p&gt;
13867
13868 &lt;p&gt;The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
13869 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
13870 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
13871 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.&lt;/p&gt;
13872
13873 &lt;p&gt;In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
13874 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
13875 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
13876 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
13877 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
13878 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.&lt;p&gt;
13879 </description>
13880         </item>
13881
13882         <item>
13883                 <title>Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</title>
13884                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html</link>
13885                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html</guid>
13886                 <pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
13887                 <description>&lt;p&gt;On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
13888 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt; was finally
13889 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
13890 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
13891 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
13892 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
13893 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.&lt;/p&gt;
13894
13895 &lt;p&gt;Perhaps it even is time for some partying?&lt;/p&gt;
13896
13897 &lt;p&gt;After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
13898 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
13899 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
13900 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.&lt;/p&gt;
13901 </description>
13902         </item>
13903
13904         <item>
13905                 <title>Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</title>
13906                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html</link>
13907                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html</guid>
13908                 <pubDate>Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
13909                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
13910 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
13911 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
13912 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
13913 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
13914 further.&lt;/p&gt;
13915
13916 &lt;p&gt;When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
13917 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
13918 configured to be a server for the
13919 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary&quot;&gt;SiteSummary
13920 system&lt;/a&gt; I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
13921 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
13922 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
13923 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
13924 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
13925 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
13926 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
13927 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
13928 and Nagios configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
13929
13930 &lt;p&gt;All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
13931 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
13932 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
13933 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.&lt;/p&gt;
13934
13935 &lt;p&gt;All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
13936 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
13937 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
13938 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
13939 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
13940 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
13941 the machine.&lt;/p&gt;
13942
13943 &lt;p&gt;The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
13944 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
13945 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
13946 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.&lt;/p&gt;
13947
13948 &lt;p&gt;The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
13949 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
13950 administrator need to run &quot;&lt;tt&gt;htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
13951 nagiosadmin&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
13952 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
13953 everything is taken care of.&lt;/p&gt;
13954 </description>
13955         </item>
13956
13957         <item>
13958                 <title>Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</title>
13959                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html</link>
13960                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html</guid>
13961                 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
13962                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
13963 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
13964 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
13965 &#39;filetype:odt&#39; and equvalent terms, and got these results:&lt;/P&gt;
13966
13967 &lt;table&gt;
13968 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
13969 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:282000&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:308000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
13970 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:75600&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:183000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
13971 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:26500     &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:145000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
13972 &lt;/table&gt;
13973
13974 &lt;p&gt;Next, I added a &#39;site:no&#39; limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
13975 got these numbers:&lt;/p&gt;
13976
13977 &lt;table&gt;
13978 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
13979 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:2480 &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:4460&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
13980 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:299   &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:741&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
13981 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:187       &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:372&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
13982 &lt;/table&gt;
13983
13984 &lt;p&gt;I wonder how these numbers change over time.&lt;/p&gt;
13985
13986 &lt;p&gt;I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
13987 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
13988 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
13989 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
13990 search done from a machine here in Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
13991
13992
13993 &lt;table&gt;
13994 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
13995 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:129000&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:308000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
13996 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:44200&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:93900&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
13997 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:26500     &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:82400&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
13998 &lt;/table&gt;
13999
14000 &lt;p&gt;And with &#39;site:no&#39;:
14001
14002 &lt;table&gt;
14003 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
14004 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:2480&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:3410&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
14005 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:175&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:604&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
14006 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:186       &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:296&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
14007 &lt;/table&gt;
14008
14009 &lt;p&gt;Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
14010 numbers.&lt;/p&gt;
14011 </description>
14012         </item>
14013
14014         <item>
14015                 <title>ISO still hope to fix OOXML</title>
14016                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html</link>
14017                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html</guid>
14018                 <pubDate>Sat, 8 Aug 2009 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
14019                 <description>&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a
14020 href=&quot;http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html&quot;&gt;a
14021 blog post from Torsten Werner&lt;/a&gt;, the current defect report for ISO
14022 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
14023 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
14024 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
14025 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
14026 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
14027 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
14028 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
14029 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.&lt;/p&gt;
14030
14031 &lt;p&gt;These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
14032 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
14033 seminar this autumn.&lt;/p&gt;
14034 </description>
14035         </item>
14036
14037         <item>
14038                 <title>Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</title>
14039                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</link>
14040                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html</guid>
14041                 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
14042                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
14043 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
14044 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
14045 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
14046 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
14047 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
14048 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.&lt;/p&gt;
14049
14050 &lt;p&gt;The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
14051 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
14052 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.&lt;/p&gt;
14053 </description>
14054         </item>
14055
14056         <item>
14057                 <title>Taking over sysvinit development</title>
14058                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</link>
14059                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html</guid>
14060                 <pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
14061                 <description>&lt;p&gt;After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
14062 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
14063 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
14064 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
14065 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
14066 the package up to date.&lt;/p&gt;
14067
14068 &lt;p&gt;On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
14069 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
14070 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
14071 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
14072 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
14073 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
14074 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
14075 upstream project at &lt;a href=&quot;http://savannah.nongnu.org/&quot;&gt;Savannah&lt;/a&gt;, and continue
14076 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
14077 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
14078 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
14079 working on the future release.&lt;/p&gt;
14080
14081 &lt;p&gt;It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
14082 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.&lt;/p&gt;
14083 </description>
14084         </item>
14085
14086         <item>
14087                 <title>Debian boots quicker and quicker</title>
14088                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</link>
14089                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html</guid>
14090                 <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
14091                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
14092 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
14093 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
14094 funded
14095 &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint&quot;&gt;developer
14096 gathering&lt;/a&gt;. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
14097 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
14098 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
14099 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
14100 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.&lt;/p&gt;
14101
14102 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
14103 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
14104 boot:&lt;/p&gt;
14105
14106 &lt;ul&gt;
14107
14108 &lt;li&gt;Use dash as /bin/sh.&lt;/li&gt;
14109
14110 &lt;li&gt;Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
14111    clock is in UTC.&lt;/li&gt;
14112
14113 &lt;li&gt;Install and activate the insserv package to enable
14114    &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot&quot;&gt;dependency
14115    based boot sequencing&lt;/a&gt;, and enable concurrent booting.&lt;/li&gt;
14116
14117 &lt;/ul&gt;
14118
14119 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
14120 &lt;a href=&quot;http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/&quot;&gt;Carlos
14121 Villegas&lt;/a&gt;.
14122
14123 &lt;p&gt;Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
14124 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
14125 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
14126 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
14127 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
14128 using this.&lt;/p&gt;
14129
14130 &lt;p&gt;On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
14131 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
14132 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
14133 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
14134 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
14135 this would be to enable insserv and run &#39;mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
14136 insserv&#39;.  Will need to test if that work. :)&lt;/p&gt;
14137 </description>
14138         </item>
14139
14140         <item>
14141                 <title>Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</title>
14142                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</link>
14143                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html</guid>
14144                 <pubDate>Sat, 2 May 2009 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
14145                 <description>&lt;p&gt;There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
14146 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
14147 do not yet know them.&lt;/p&gt;
14148
14149 &lt;p&gt;The first one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://valgrind.org/&quot;&gt;valgrind&lt;/a&gt;, a
14150 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
14151 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run &#39;valgrind program&#39;,
14152 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
14153 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
14154 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
14155 occurs.  It can report things like &#39;reading past memory block in file
14156 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M&#39;, and
14157 &#39;using uninitialised value in control logic&#39;.  This tool has made it
14158 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
14159 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
14160
14161 &lt;p&gt;The second one is
14162 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity&quot;&gt;Coverity&lt;/a&gt; which is
14163 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
14164 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
14165 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
14166 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
14167 and the company behind it is running
14168 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scan.coverity.com/&quot;&gt;a community service&lt;/a&gt; for the
14169 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
14170 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
14171 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like &#39;lock L taken in file
14172 X line N is never released if exiting in line M&#39;, or &#39;the code in file
14173 Y lines O to P can never be executed&#39;.  The projects included in the
14174 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
14175 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.&lt;/p&gt;
14176
14177 &lt;p&gt;I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
14178 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
14179 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
14180 surrounded by today.&lt;/p&gt;
14181 </description>
14182         </item>
14183
14184         <item>
14185                 <title>No patch is not better than a useless patch</title>
14186                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</link>
14187                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html</guid>
14188                 <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
14189                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Julien Blache
14190 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214&quot;&gt;claim that no
14191 patch is better than a useless patch&lt;/a&gt;.  I completely disagree, as a
14192 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
14193 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
14194 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
14195 properties.&lt;/p&gt;
14196 </description>
14197         </item>
14198
14199         <item>
14200                 <title>Recording video from cron using VLC</title>
14201                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html</link>
14202                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html</guid>
14203                 <pubDate>Sun, 5 Apr 2009 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
14204                 <description>&lt;p&gt;One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
14205 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
14206 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
14207 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
14208 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
14209 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
14210 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
14211 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:&lt;/p&gt;
14212
14213 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
14214 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
14215 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
14216   --sout=&quot;#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url=&#39;$SAVEFILE&#39;},dst=nodisplay}&quot; \
14217   --intf=dummy&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14218
14219 &lt;p&gt;The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
14220 duplicating the output stream to &quot;nodisplay&quot; and the file, using the
14221 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
14222 sure no X interface is needed.&lt;/p&gt;
14223
14224 &lt;p&gt;The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
14225 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
14226 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
14227 &lt;tt&gt;vlc-record&lt;/tt&gt; to use from &lt;tt&gt;at&lt;/tt&gt; or &lt;tt&gt;cron&lt;/tt&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
14228
14229 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;#!/bin/sh
14230 set -e
14231 URL=&quot;$1&quot;
14232 SAVEFILE=&quot;$2&quot;
14233 DURATION=&quot;$3&quot;
14234 DISPLAY= vlc -q &quot;$URL&quot; \
14235   --sout=&quot;#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url=&#39;$SAVEFILE&#39;},dst=nodisplay}&quot; \
14236   --intf=dummy &lt; /dev/null &gt; /dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1 &amp;
14237 pid=$!
14238 sleep $DURATION
14239 kill $pid
14240 wait $pid&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
14241 </description>
14242         </item>
14243
14244         <item>
14245                 <title>Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</title>
14246                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</link>
14247                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</guid>
14248                 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
14249                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
14250 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
14251 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
14252 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
14253 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
14254 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
14255 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
14256 application.&lt;/p&gt;
14257
14258 &lt;p&gt;This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
14259 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
14260 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
14261 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
14262 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
14263 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
14264 blocked from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;
14265
14266 &lt;p&gt;It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
14267 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
14268 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
14269 requirements change.&lt;/p&gt;
14270
14271 &lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
14272 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
14273 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.&lt;/p&gt;
14274 </description>
14275         </item>
14276
14277         <item>
14278                 <title>Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</title>
14279                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</link>
14280                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html</guid>
14281                 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
14282                 <description>&lt;p&gt;I&#39;m sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
14283 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
14284 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
14285 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
14286 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
14287 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
14288 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
14289 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
14290 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
14291 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
14292 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
14293 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
14294 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
14295 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
14296 now. :)&lt;/p&gt;
14297 </description>
14298         </item>
14299
14300         <item>
14301                 <title>Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</title>
14302                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</link>
14303                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html</guid>
14304                 <pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
14305                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
14306 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
14307 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
14308 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
14309 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
14310 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.&lt;/p&gt;
14311
14312 &lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu/Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;,
14313 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
14314 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
14315 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
14316 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
14317 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
14318 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
14319 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
14320 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
14321 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
14322 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
14323 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
14324 specifications to cleam up this mess.&lt;/p&gt;
14325
14326 &lt;p&gt;I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
14327 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
14328 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
14329 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.&lt;/p&gt;
14330
14331 &lt;p&gt;I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
14332 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.&lt;/p&gt;
14333
14334 &lt;p&gt;Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
14335 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
14336 new IETF work group?&lt;/p&gt;
14337 </description>
14338         </item>
14339
14340         <item>
14341                 <title>Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</title>
14342                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html</link>
14343                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html</guid>
14344                 <pubDate>Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
14345                 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
14346 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
14347 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
14348 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
14349 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
14350 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
14351 status, I&#39;ve recently spent time on extending the machine register to
14352 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
14353 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
14354 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
14355 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
14356 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
14357 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
14358 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
14359 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
14360 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
14361 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
14362 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
14363 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
14364 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
14365 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
14366 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
14367 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
14368 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
14369 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
14370 machine.&lt;/p&gt;
14371
14372 &lt;p&gt;I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
14373 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
14374 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
14375 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
14376 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
14377 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
14378 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:&lt;/p&gt;
14379
14380 &lt;pre&gt;
14381 use LWP::Simple;
14382 use POSIX;
14383 use WWW::Mechanize;
14384 use Date::Parse;
14385 [...]
14386 sub get_support_info {
14387     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
14388     my $str;
14389
14390     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
14391         # fetch website from Dell support
14392         my $url = &quot;http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;amp;l=no&amp;amp;s=dhs&amp;amp;ServiceTag=$serial&quot;;
14393         my $webpage = get($url);
14394         return undef unless ($webpage);
14395
14396         my $daysleft = -1;
14397         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
14398         foreach my $line (@lines) {
14399             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
14400             $line =~ s/&amp;lt;[^&gt;]+?&gt;/;/gm;
14401             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
14402
14403             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
14404             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
14405             my $lastend = &quot;&quot;;
14406             while ($f[3] eq &quot;DELL&quot;) {
14407                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
14408
14409                 my $start = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
14410                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
14411                 my $end = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
14412                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
14413                 $str .= &quot;$type $start -&gt; $end &quot;;
14414                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
14415                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
14416             }
14417             my $today = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;, localtime(time));
14418             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
14419                 if ($lastend lt $today);
14420         }
14421     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
14422         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize-&gt;new();
14423         my $url =
14424             &#39;http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do&#39;;
14425         $mech-&gt;get($url);
14426         my $fields = {
14427             &#39;BODServiceID&#39; =&gt; &#39;NA&#39;,
14428             &#39;RegisteredPurchaseDate&#39; =&gt; &#39;&#39;,
14429             &#39;country&#39; =&gt; &#39;NO&#39;,
14430             &#39;productNumber&#39; =&gt; $productnumber,
14431             &#39;serialNumber1&#39; =&gt; $serial,
14432         };
14433         $mech-&gt;submit_form( form_number =&gt; 2,
14434                             fields      =&gt; $fields );
14435         # Next step is screen scraping
14436         my $content = $mech-&gt;content();
14437
14438         $content =~ s/&amp;lt;[^&gt;]+?&gt;/;/gm;
14439         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
14440         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
14441         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
14442
14443         my $today = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;, localtime(time));
14444
14445         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
14446             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
14447                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
14448             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
14449             my $start = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
14450                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
14451             my $end = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;,
14452                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
14453
14454             $str .= &quot;$type ($status) $start -&gt; $end &quot;;
14455
14456             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
14457                 if ($end lt $today);
14458         }
14459     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
14460         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
14461         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
14462         if ($producttype &amp;amp;&amp;amp; $serial) {
14463             my $content =
14464                 get(&quot;http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;amp;brandind=5000008&amp;amp;Submit=Submit&amp;amp;type=$producttype&amp;amp;serial=$serial&quot;);
14465             if ($content) {
14466                 $content =~ s/&amp;lt;[^&gt;]+?&gt;/;/gm;
14467                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
14468                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
14469                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
14470
14471                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
14472                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
14473
14474                 $str .= &quot;($status) -&gt; $end &quot;;
14475
14476                 my $today = POSIX::strftime(&quot;%Y-%m-%d&quot;, localtime(time));
14477                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
14478                     if ($end lt $today);
14479             }
14480         }
14481     }
14482     return $str;
14483 }
14484 &lt;/pre&gt;
14485
14486 &lt;p&gt;Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
14487 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
14488 from dmidecode.&lt;/p&gt;
14489
14490 &lt;pre&gt;
14491 print get_support_info(&quot;hp.host&quot;, &quot;HP ProLiant BL460c G1&quot;, &quot;1234567890&quot;
14492                        &quot;447707-B21&quot;);
14493 print get_support_info(&quot;dell.host&quot;, &quot;Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950&quot;, &quot;1234567&quot;);
14494 print get_support_info(&quot;ibm.host&quot;, &quot;IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-&quot;,
14495                        &quot;1234567&quot;);
14496 &lt;/pre&gt;
14497
14498 &lt;p&gt;I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
14499 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)&lt;/p&gt;
14500
14501 &lt;p&gt;Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
14502 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
14503 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
14504 do so.&lt;/p&gt;
14505 </description>
14506         </item>
14507
14508         <item>
14509                 <title>Using bar codes at a computing center</title>
14510                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html</link>
14511                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html</guid>
14512                 <pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
14513                 <description>&lt;p&gt;At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
14514 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
14515 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
14516 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
14517 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
14518 the &quot;missing&quot; computer.&lt;/p&gt;
14519
14520 &lt;p&gt;In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
14521 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.libdmtx.org/&quot;&gt;libdmtx&lt;/a&gt; to write and read bar
14522 code blocks as defined in the
14523 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix&quot;&gt;The Data Matrix
14524 Standard&lt;/a&gt;.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
14525 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
14526 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
14527 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
14528 with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/&quot;&gt;a bar code
14529 writer written in postscript&lt;/a&gt; capable of creating such bar codes,
14530 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
14531 codes.&lt;/p&gt;
14532
14533 &lt;p&gt;It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
14534 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
14535 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
14536 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
14537 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
14538 locations, and can detect movements and removals.&lt;/p&gt;
14539
14540 &lt;p&gt;I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
14541 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
14542 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
14543 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
14544 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
14545 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
14546 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
14547 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
14548 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
14549 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.&lt;/p&gt;
14550
14551 &lt;p&gt;My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
14552 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
14553 easier automatic tracking of computers.&lt;/p&gt;
14554 </description>
14555         </item>
14556
14557         <item>
14558                 <title>When web browser developers make a video player...</title>
14559                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html</link>
14560                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html</guid>
14561                 <pubDate>Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
14562                 <description>&lt;p&gt;As part of the work we do in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt;
14563 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
14564 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
14565 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
14566 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
14567 will become easier when the &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag is implemented in all
14568 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
14569 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
14570 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
14571 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
14572 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
14573 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag, the &amp;lt;object&amp;gt; tag, the &amp;lt;embed&amp;gt; tag and
14574 the &amp;lt;applet&amp;gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
14575 finding the best options is a major challenge.&lt;/p&gt;
14576
14577 &lt;p&gt;I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from &lt;a
14578 href=&quot;http://labs.opera.com&quot;&gt;labs.opera.com&lt;/a&gt;, to see how it handled
14579 a &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
14580 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
14581 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
14582 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
14583 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
14584 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
14585 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
14586 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
14587 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
14588 discover that I have to add the controls=&quot;true&quot; attribute to be able
14589 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
14590 autoplay=&quot;true&quot; did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
14591 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
14592 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
14593 playing when the download is done.&lt;/p&gt;
14594
14595 &lt;p&gt;The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
14596 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/&quot;&gt;available
14597 from the nuug site&lt;/a&gt;.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
14598 too.&lt;/p&gt;
14599
14600 &lt;p&gt;In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
14601 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
14602 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
14603 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)&lt;/p&gt;
14604 </description>
14605         </item>
14606
14607         <item>
14608                 <title>Software video mixer on a USB stick</title>
14609                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html</link>
14610                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html</guid>
14611                 <pubDate>Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
14612                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix User Group&lt;/a&gt; is
14613 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
14614 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
14615 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
14616 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/&quot;&gt;dvswitch&lt;/a&gt; package from
14617 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
14618 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
14619 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
14620 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
14621 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
14622 source, sink and mixer applications and
14623 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kinodv.org/&quot;&gt;dvgrab&lt;/a&gt;.  To allow this setup to
14624 work without any configuration, I&#39;ve patched dvswitch to use
14625 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avahi.org/&quot;&gt;avahi&lt;/a&gt; to connect the various parts
14626 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
14627 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
14628 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
14629 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
14630 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
14631 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goopen.no/&quot;&gt;Go Open 2009&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
14632
14633 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz&quot;&gt;The
14634 USB image&lt;/a&gt; is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
14635 larger stick as well.&lt;/p&gt;
14636 </description>
14637         </item>
14638
14639         <item>
14640                 <title>Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</title>
14641                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</link>
14642                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html</guid>
14643                 <pubDate>Sun, 7 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
14644                 <description>&lt;p&gt;This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
14645 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
14646 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
14647 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
14648 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
14649 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
14650 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
14651 finish it before the weekend was up.&lt;/p&gt;
14652
14653 &lt;p&gt;Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
14654 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
14655 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
14656 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
14657 of these cards.&lt;/p&gt;
14658 </description>
14659         </item>
14660
14661         <item>
14662                 <title>The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</title>
14663                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</link>
14664                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html</guid>
14665                 <pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
14666                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
14667 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
14668 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
14669 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
14670 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
14671 notes are available on
14672 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia&quot;&gt;the
14673 Debian wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
14674 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
14675 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
14676 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
14677 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
14678 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn&#39;t supported by the
14679 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
14680 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.&lt;/p&gt;
14681
14682 &lt;p&gt;For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
14683 be the only one fitting our needs. :/&lt;/p&gt;
14684 </description>
14685         </item>
14686
14687         </channel>
14688 </rss>