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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         15th March 2016
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
  32 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
  33 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
  34 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
  35 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
  36 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
  37 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
  38 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
  39 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
  40 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
  41 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
  42
  43 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
  44 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
  45 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
  46 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
  47 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
  48 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
  49 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
  50 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
  51 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
  52 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
  53 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
  54
  55 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
  56
  57 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
  58 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
  59 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
  60 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
  61 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
  62 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
  63
  64 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
  65 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
  66 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
  67 and graphing.</p>
  68
  69 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
  70 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
  71 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
  72 on
  73 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
  74 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
  75
  76       </div>
  77       <div class="tags">
  78
  79
  80         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
  81
  82
  83       </div>
  84     </div>
  85     <div class="padding"></div>
  86
  87     <div class="entry">
  88       <div class="title">
  89         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
  90       </div>
  91       <div class="date">
  92         19th February 2016
  93       </div>
  94       <div class="body">
  95         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
  96 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
  97 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
  98 the code in the package in question, preferably in
  99 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
 100 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
 101
 102 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
 103 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
 104 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
 105 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
 106 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
 107 out what was wrong with
 108 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
 109 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
 110 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
 111 semi-automatically.</p>
 112
 113 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
 114 file based on the code in the source package,
 115 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
 116 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
 117 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
 118 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
 119 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
 120 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
 121 option in
 122 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
 123 blog posts from 2014</a>.
 124
 125 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
 126
 127 <p><pre>
 128 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
 129 </pre></p>
 130
 131 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
 132 this might not be the best option.</p>
 133
 134 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
 135 this approach in
 136 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
 137 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
 138 dpkg-copyright' option:
 139
 140 <p><pre>
 141 cme update dpkg-copyright
 142 </pre></p>
 143
 144 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
 145 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
 146
 147 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
 148 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
 149 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
 150 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
 151 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
 152 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
 153 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
 154 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
 155 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
 156 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
 157
 158 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
 159 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
 160 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
 161 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
 162
 163 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
 164 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
 165 planet.debian.org.</p>
 166
 167 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 168 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 169 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 170
 171 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
 172 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
 173
 174 <p><pre>
 175 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
 176   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
 177 </pre></p>
 178
 179 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
 180 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
 181 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
 182 with my packages in the future.</p>
 183
 184 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
 185 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
 186 command line.</p>
 187
 188       </div>
 189       <div class="tags">
 190
 191
 192         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 193
 194
 195       </div>
 196     </div>
 197     <div class="padding"></div>
 198
 199     <div class="entry">
 200       <div class="title">
 201         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
 202       </div>
 203       <div class="date">
 204          4th February 2016
 205       </div>
 206       <div class="body">
 207         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
 208 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
 209 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
 210 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
 211 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
 212 about. :)</p>
 213
 214 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
 215 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
 216 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
 217 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
 218 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
 219 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
 220
 221 <blockquote><pre>
 222 % apt install appstream
 223 [...]
 224 % apt update
 225 [...]
 226 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
 227   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
 228 firmware-qlogic
 229 %
 230 </pre></blockquote>
 231
 232 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
 233 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
 234 a way appstream can use.</p>
 235
 236 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
 237 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
 238 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
 239 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
 240 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
 241 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
 242
 243 <blockquote><pre>
 244 % apt install appstream
 245 [...]
 246 % apt update
 247 [...]
 248 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
 249   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
 250 bkchem
 251 phototonic
 252 inkscape
 253 shutter
 254 tetzle
 255 geeqie
 256 xia
 257 pinta
 258 gthumb
 259 karbon
 260 comix
 261 mirage
 262 viewnior
 263 postr
 264 ristretto
 265 kolourpaint4
 266 eog
 267 eom
 268 gimagereader
 269 midori
 270 %
 271 </pre></blockquote>
 272
 273 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
 274 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
 275
 276       </div>
 277       <div class="tags">
 278
 279
 280         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 281
 282
 283       </div>
 284     </div>
 285     <div class="padding"></div>
 286
 287     <div class="entry">
 288       <div class="title">
 289         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
 290       </div>
 291       <div class="date">
 292         24th January 2016
 293       </div>
 294       <div class="body">
 295         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
 296 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
 297 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
 298 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
 299 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
 300 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
 301 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
 302 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
 303 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
 304 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
 305 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
 306 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
 307 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
 308 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
 309 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
 310 entities.</p>
 311
 312 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
 313
 314 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
 315 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
 316 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
 317 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
 318 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
 319 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
 320 tool to do so is called
 321 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
 322 discovered it when I read
 323 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
 324 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
 325 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
 326 The python program was in Debian, but
 327 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
 328 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
 329 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
 330 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
 331 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
 332 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
 333 are now included
 334 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
 335
 336 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
 337 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
 338 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
 339 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
 340 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
 341 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
 342 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
 343 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
 344 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
 345 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
 346 about yourself with the services.</p>
 347
 348 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
 349 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
 350 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
 351 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
 352 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
 353 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
 354 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
 355 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
 356 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
 357 things.  A similar technique have been
 358 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
 359 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
 360 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
 361 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
 362 public.</p>
 363
 364 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
 365 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
 366 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
 367 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
 368
 369 <p>(I have uploaded
 370 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
 371 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
 372 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
 373
 374       </div>
 375       <div class="tags">
 376
 377
 378         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 379
 380
 381       </div>
 382     </div>
 383     <div class="padding"></div>
 384
 385     <div class="entry">
 386       <div class="title">
 387         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
 388       </div>
 389       <div class="date">
 390         15th January 2016
 391       </div>
 392       <div class="body">
 393         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
 394 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
 395 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
 396 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
 397 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
 398 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
 399 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
 400 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
 401 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
 402 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
 403 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
 404 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
 405 was not the first to propose this, as the
 406 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
 407 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
 408 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
 409 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
 410
 411 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
 412 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
 413 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
 414 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
 415 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
 416
 417 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
 418 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
 419 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
 420 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
 421 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
 422 done in /etc/.</p>
 423
 424 <blockquote><pre>
 425 apt install apt-transport-tor
 426 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
 427 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
 428 </pre></blockquote>
 429
 430 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
 431 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
 432 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
 433 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
 434
 435 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
 436 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
 437 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
 438 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
 439 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
 440 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
 441
 442 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
 443 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
 444 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
 445 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
 446 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
 447
 448 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
 449 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
 450 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
 451 system.</p>
 452
 453       </div>
 454       <div class="tags">
 455
 456
 457         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 458
 459
 460       </div>
 461     </div>
 462     <div class="padding"></div>
 463
 464     <div class="entry">
 465       <div class="title">
 466         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
 467       </div>
 468       <div class="date">
 469         23rd December 2015
 470       </div>
 471       <div class="body">
 472         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
 473 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
 474 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
 475 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
 476 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
 477 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
 478
 479 <p>A few days I came across
 480 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
 481 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
 482 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
 483 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
 484 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
 485 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
 486 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
 487 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
 488 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
 489 discovered the developer
 490 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
 491 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
 492 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
 493 archive.</p>
 494
 495 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
 496 it into Debian, where it currently
 497 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
 498 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
 499
 500 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
 501 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
 502 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
 503 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
 504 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
 505 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
 506 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
 507 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
 508 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
 509 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
 510 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
 511 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
 512
 513 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
 514 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
 515 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
 516 package show up in unstable.</p>
 517
 518       </div>
 519       <div class="tags">
 520
 521
 522         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 523
 524
 525       </div>
 526     </div>
 527     <div class="padding"></div>
 528
 529     <div class="entry">
 530       <div class="title">
 531         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
 532       </div>
 533       <div class="date">
 534         20th December 2015
 535       </div>
 536       <div class="body">
 537         <p>Around three years ago, I created
 538 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
 539 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
 540 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
 541 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
 542 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
 543 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
 544 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
 545 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
 546 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
 547 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
 548 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
 549 with.</p>
 550
 551 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
 552 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
 553 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
 554 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
 555 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
 556 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
 557 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
 558 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
 559 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
 560 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
 561 Debian version of appstream.</p>
 562
 563 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
 564 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
 565 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
 566 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
 567 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
 568 how do add the required
 569 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
 570 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
 571 this content:</p>
 572
 573 <blockquote><pre>
 574 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
 575 &lt;component&gt;
 576   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
 577   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
 578   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
 579   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
 580   &lt;description&gt;
 581     &lt;p&gt;
 582       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
 583       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
 584       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
 585       launcher.
 586     &lt;/p&gt;
 587   &lt;/description&gt;
 588   &lt;provides&gt;
 589     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
 590   &lt;/provides&gt;
 591 &lt;/component&gt;
 592 </pre></blockquote>
 593
 594 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
 595 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
 596 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
 597 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
 598 0202.</p>
 599
 600 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
 601 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
 602 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
 603 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
 604 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
 605 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
 606 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
 607 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
 608
 609 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
 610 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
 611 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
 612 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
 613 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
 614
 615 <blockquote><pre>
 616 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
 617 </pre></blockquote>
 618
 619 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
 620 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
 621 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
 622 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
 623 question.</p>
 624
 625 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
 626 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
 627
 628 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
 629 try running this command on the command line:</p>
 630
 631 <blockquote><pre>
 632 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
 633 </pre></blockquote>
 634
 635 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
 636 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
 637 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
 638
 639       </div>
 640       <div class="tags">
 641
 642
 643         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 644
 645
 646       </div>
 647     </div>
 648     <div class="padding"></div>
 649
 650     <div class="entry">
 651       <div class="title">
 652         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
 653       </div>
 654       <div class="date">
 655         30th November 2015
 656       </div>
 657       <div class="body">
 658         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
 659 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
 660 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
 661 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
 662 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
 663
 664 <blockquote>
 665
 666 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
 667
 668 <blockquote>
 669 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
 670
 671 The first step is to choose a
 672 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
 673 code.<br/>
 674
 675 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
 676 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
 677
 678 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
 679 work<br/>
 680
 681 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
 682 </blockquote>
 683
 684 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
 685 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
 686 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
 687 0x57</a></small></p>
 688
 689 <p>As the Debian Website
 690 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
 691 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
 692 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
 693 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
 694 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
 695 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
 696 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
 697 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
 698 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
 699 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
 700 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
 701 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
 702 Freedom">FaiF</a>
 703 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
 704 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
 705 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
 706 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
 707 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
 708 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
 709 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
 710 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
 711 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
 712 In March the SFC supported a
 713 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
 714 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
 715 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
 716 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
 717 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
 718 conferences
 719 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
 720 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
 721 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
 722 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
 723 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
 724 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
 725 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
 726 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
 727 Software.</p>
 728
 729 <p>If you support Free Software,
 730 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
 731 what the SFC do, agree with their
 732 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
 733 principles</a>, are happy about their
 734 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
 735 work on a project that is an SFC
 736 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
 737 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
 738 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
 739 Allan Webber</a>,
 740 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
 741 Smith</a>,
 742 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
 743 Bacon</a>, myself and
 744 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
 745 becoming a
 746 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
 747 next week your donation will be
 748 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
 749 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
 750 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
 751 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
 752 social media accounts.</p>
 753
 754 </blockquote>
 755
 756 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
 757 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
 758 supporter too?</p>
 759
 760       </div>
 761       <div class="tags">
 762
 763
 764         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
 765
 766
 767       </div>
 768     </div>
 769     <div class="padding"></div>
 770
 771     <div class="entry">
 772       <div class="title">
 773         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
 774       </div>
 775       <div class="date">
 776         17th November 2015
 777       </div>
 778       <div class="body">
 779         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
 780 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
 781 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
 782 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
 783 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
 784 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
 785 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
 786 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
 787 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
 788 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
 789
 790 <pre>
 791 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
 792       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
 793 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
 794 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
 795 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 796 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 797 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 798 </pre>
 799
 800 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
 801 my old key.</p>
 802
 803 <p>If you signed my old key
 804 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
 805 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
 806 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
 807 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
 808
 809       </div>
 810       <div class="tags">
 811
 812
 813         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
 814
 815
 816       </div>
 817     </div>
 818     <div class="padding"></div>
 819
 820     <div class="entry">
 821       <div class="title">
 822         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
 823       </div>
 824       <div class="date">
 825         24th September 2015
 826       </div>
 827       <div class="body">
 828         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
 829 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
 830 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
 831 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
 832 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
 833 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
 834 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
 835
 836 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
 837
 838 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
 839 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
 840 by someone else.  I found
 841 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
 842 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
 843 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
 844 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
 845 from him.  Via
 846 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
 847 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
 848 discovered
 849 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
 850 available in Debian.</p>
 851
 852 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
 853 battery stats ever since. Now my
 854 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
 855 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
 856 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
 857 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
 858
 859 <pre>
 860 #!/bin/sh
 861 # Inspired by
 862 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
 863 # See also
 864 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
 865 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
 866
 867 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
 868     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
 869
 870 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
 871     (
 872         printf "timestamp,"
 873         for f in $files; do
 874             printf "%s," $f
 875         done
 876         echo
 877     ) > "$logfile"
 878 fi
 879
 880 log_battery() {
 881     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
 882     # when several log processes run in parallel.
 883     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
 884         for f in $files; do \
 885             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
 886         done)
 887     echo "$msg"
 888 }
 889
 890 cd /sys/class/power_supply
 891
 892 for bat in BAT*; do
 893     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
 894 done
 895 </pre>
 896
 897 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
 898 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
 899 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
 900 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
 901 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
 902 The code for the Debian package
 903 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
 904 available on github</a>.</p>
 905
 906 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
 907
 908 <pre>
 909 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
 910 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
 911 [...]
 912 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 913 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 914 </pre>
 915
 916 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
 917 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
 918 battery.</p>
 919
 920 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
 921 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
 922 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
 923 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
 924 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
 925 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
 926 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
 927 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
 928 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
 929 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
 930 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
 931 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
 932 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
 933 Linux too.</p>
 934
 935 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
 936 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
 937 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
 938 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
 939 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
 940 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
 941 load).</p>
 942
 943 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
 944 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
 945 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
 946 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
 947 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
 948 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
 949 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
 950 those.</p>
 951
 952 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
 953 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
 954 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
 955 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
 956 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
 957 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
 958 specific.</p>
 959
 960       </div>
 961       <div class="tags">
 962
 963
 964         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 965
 966
 967       </div>
 968     </div>
 969     <div class="padding"></div>
 970
 971     <div class="entry">
 972       <div class="title">
 973         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
 974       </div>
 975       <div class="date">
 976          5th July 2015
 977       </div>
 978       <div class="body">
 979         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
 980 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
 981 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
 982 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
 983 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
 984 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
 985 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
 986 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
 987 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
 988 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
 989 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
 990
 991 <p>One tip I got was to use the
 992 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
 993 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
 994 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
 995 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
 996 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
 997 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
 998
 999 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
1000 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
1001 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
1002 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
1003 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
1004 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
1005 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
1006 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
1007 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
1008 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
1009 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
1010 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
1011 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
1012 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
1013 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
1014
1015 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
1016 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
1017 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
1018 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
1019
1020 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
1021 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
1022
1023 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
1024 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
1025 different
1026 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
1027 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
1028
1029       </div>
1030       <div class="tags">
1031
1032
1033         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1034
1035
1036       </div>
1037     </div>
1038     <div class="padding"></div>
1039
1040     <div class="entry">
1041       <div class="title">
1042         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
1043       </div>
1044       <div class="date">
1045          3rd July 2015
1046       </div>
1047       <div class="body">
1048         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
1049 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
1050 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
1051 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
1052 flickering.</p>
1053
1054 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
1055 still as
1056 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
1057 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
1058 good help from
1059 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
1060 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
1061 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
1062 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
1063 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
1064 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
1065 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
1066 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
1067 deteriorated since X41.</p>
1068
1069 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
1070 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
1071 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
1072 have suggestions.</p>
1073
1074 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
1075 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
1076 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
1077
1078       </div>
1079       <div class="tags">
1080
1081
1082         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1083
1084
1085       </div>
1086     </div>
1087     <div class="padding"></div>
1088
1089     <div class="entry">
1090       <div class="title">
1091         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
1092       </div>
1093       <div class="date">
1094         22nd November 2014
1095       </div>
1096       <div class="body">
1097         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
1098 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
1099 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
1100 courtesy of
1101 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
1102 Schubert</a> and
1103 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
1104 McVittie</a>.
1105
1106 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
1107 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
1108 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
1109 you upgrade:</p>
1110
1111 <p><blockquote><pre>
1112 Package: systemd-sysv
1113 Pin: release o=Debian
1114 Pin-Priority: -1
1115 </pre></blockquote><p>
1116
1117 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
1118 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
1119 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
1120 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
1121 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
1122
1123 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
1124 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
1125 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
1126 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
1127 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
1128 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
1129
1130 <p><blockquote><pre>
1131 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
1132 </pre></blockquote><p>
1133
1134 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
1135
1136 <p><blockquote><pre>
1137 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
1138 </pre></blockquote><p>
1139
1140 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
1141 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
1142
1143 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
1144 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
1145 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
1146 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
1147 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
1148 Jessie is released.</p>
1149
1150 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
1151 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
1152 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
1153 line.</p>
1154
1155       </div>
1156       <div class="tags">
1157
1158
1159         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1160
1161
1162       </div>
1163     </div>
1164     <div class="padding"></div>
1165
1166     <div class="entry">
1167       <div class="title">
1168         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
1169       </div>
1170       <div class="date">
1171         10th November 2014
1172       </div>
1173       <div class="body">
1174         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
1175 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
1176 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
1177
1178 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
1179 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
1180 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
1181 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
1182 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
1183 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
1184 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
1185 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
1186 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
1187 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
1188 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
1189 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
1190 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
1191 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
1192 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
1193
1194 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
1195 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
1196 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
1197 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
1198 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
1199 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
1200 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
1201 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
1202 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
1203 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
1204 were fairly easy, and
1205 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
1206 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
1207 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
1208 useful approach.</p>
1209
1210 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
1211 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
1212 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
1213 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
1214 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
1215 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
1216 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
1217 this:</p>
1218
1219 <p><blockquote><pre>
1220 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
1221   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
1222 </pre></blockquote></p>
1223
1224 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
1225 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
1226
1227 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
1228 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
1229 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
1230 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
1231 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
1232 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
1233 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
1234 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
1235 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
1236 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
1237 system.</p>
1238
1239 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
1240 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
1241 SMTorP. :)</p>
1242
1243       </div>
1244       <div class="tags">
1245
1246
1247         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1248
1249
1250       </div>
1251     </div>
1252     <div class="padding"></div>
1253
1254     <div class="entry">
1255       <div class="title">
1256         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
1257       </div>
1258       <div class="date">
1259         22nd October 2014
1260       </div>
1261       <div class="body">
1262         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
1263 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
1264 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
1265 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
1266 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
1267 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
1268 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
1269 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
1270 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
1271 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
1272 lists I recently took over:</p>
1273
1274 <p><blockquote><pre>
1275 % time listadmin xiph
1276 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1277 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1278
1279 real    0m1.709s
1280 user    0m0.232s
1281 sys     0m0.012s
1282 %
1283 </pre></blockquote></p>
1284
1285 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
1286 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
1287 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
1288 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
1289 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
1290 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
1291 program.</p>
1292
1293 <p>If you install
1294 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
1295 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
1296 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
1297
1298 <p><blockquote><pre>
1299 username username@example.org
1300 spamlevel 23
1301 default discard
1302 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
1303
1304 password secret
1305 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
1306 mailman-list@lists.example.com
1307
1308 password hidden
1309 other-list@otherserver.example.org
1310 </pre></blockquote></p>
1311
1312 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
1313 learn the details.</p>
1314
1315 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
1316 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
1317 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
1318 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
1319
1320 <p><blockquote><pre>
1321 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
1322 </pre></blockquote></p>
1323
1324 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
1325 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
1326 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
1327 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
1328 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
1329 email.</p>
1330
1331 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
1332 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
1333 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
1334 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
1335 software.</p>
1336
1337 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1338 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1339 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1340
1341 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
1342 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
1343 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
1344 sure why.</p>
1345
1346       </div>
1347       <div class="tags">
1348
1349
1350         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
1351
1352
1353       </div>
1354     </div>
1355     <div class="padding"></div>
1356
1357     <div class="entry">
1358       <div class="title">
1359         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
1360       </div>
1361       <div class="date">
1362         17th October 2014
1363       </div>
1364       <div class="body">
1365         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
1366 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
1367 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
1368 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
1369 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
1370 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
1371 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
1372
1373 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
1374 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
1375 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
1376 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
1377 of this story.)</p>
1378
1379 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
1380 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
1381 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
1382 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
1383 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
1384 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
1385 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
1386 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
1387 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
1388 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
1389
1390 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
1391 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
1392 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
1393 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
1394
1395 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
1396 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
1397
1398 <p><blockquote><pre>
1399 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
1400 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
1401 </pre></blockquote></p>
1402
1403 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
1404 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
1405 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
1406 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
1407 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
1408 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
1409 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
1410 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
1411
1412 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
1413 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
1414
1415 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
1416 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
1417 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
1418 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
1419 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
1420
1421 <p><blockquote><pre>
1422 Task: isenkram-packages
1423 Section: hardware
1424 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1425  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1426  proposed.
1427 Test-new-install: show show
1428 Relevance: 8
1429 Packages: for-current-hardware
1430
1431 Task: isenkram-firmware
1432 Section: hardware
1433 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1434  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
1435  packages are proposed.
1436 Test-new-install: mark show
1437 Relevance: 8
1438 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
1439 </pre></blockquote></p>
1440
1441 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
1442 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
1443 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
1444 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
1445 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
1446
1447 <p><blockquote><pre>
1448 #!/bin/sh
1449 #
1450 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
1451 export PATH
1452 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1453 </pre></blockquote></p>
1454
1455 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
1456 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
1457
1458 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
1459 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
1460 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
1461 install.</p>
1462
1463 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
1464 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
1465 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
1466
1467       </div>
1468       <div class="tags">
1469
1470
1471         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
1472
1473
1474       </div>
1475     </div>
1476     <div class="padding"></div>
1477
1478     <div class="entry">
1479       <div class="title">
1480         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
1481       </div>
1482       <div class="date">
1483          4th October 2014
1484       </div>
1485       <div class="body">
1486         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
1487 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
1488 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
1489 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
1490
1491 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
1492
1493 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
1494 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
1495 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
1496
1497       </div>
1498       <div class="tags">
1499
1500
1501         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1502
1503
1504       </div>
1505     </div>
1506     <div class="padding"></div>
1507
1508     <div class="entry">
1509       <div class="title">
1510         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
1511       </div>
1512       <div class="date">
1513          4th October 2014
1514       </div>
1515       <div class="body">
1516         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
1517 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
1518 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
1519 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
1520 Dibb.</p>
1521
1522 <p>I just wrapped up
1523 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
1524 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
1525 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
1526 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
1527 0.17.</p>
1528
1529 <ul>
1530
1531  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
1532  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
1533    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
1534  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
1535  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
1536  <li>Fix include orders</li>
1537  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
1538  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
1539  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
1540    the palette size is the same.</li>
1541  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
1542  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
1543  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
1544  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
1545    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
1546
1547 </ul>
1548
1549 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
1550 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
1551 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
1552
1553       </div>
1554       <div class="tags">
1555
1556
1557         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
1558
1559
1560       </div>
1561     </div>
1562     <div class="padding"></div>
1563
1564     <div class="entry">
1565       <div class="title">
1566         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
1567       </div>
1568       <div class="date">
1569         26th September 2014
1570       </div>
1571       <div class="body">
1572         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1573 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
1574 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
1575 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
1576 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
1577 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
1578 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
1579 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
1580 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
1581 future.  The
1582 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
1583 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
1584 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
1585 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
1586 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
1587
1588 <p>First, download the test ISO via
1589 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
1590 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
1591 or rsync (use
1592 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
1593 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
1594 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
1595 install with some tweaking.</p>
1596
1597 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
1598 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
1599
1600 <p><blockquote><pre>
1601 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
1602 </pre></blockquote></p>
1603
1604 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
1605 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
1606 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
1607 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
1608
1609 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
1610 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
1611 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
1612 your need.</p>
1613
1614 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
1615 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
1616 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
1617 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
1618 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
1619 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
1620 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
1621 days.</p>
1622
1623 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
1624 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
1625 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
1626 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
1627 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
1628 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
1629 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
1630 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
1631 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
1632
1633 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
1634 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
1635 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
1636
1637       </div>
1638       <div class="tags">
1639
1640
1641         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1642
1643
1644       </div>
1645     </div>
1646     <div class="padding"></div>
1647
1648     <div class="entry">
1649       <div class="title">
1650         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
1651       </div>
1652       <div class="date">
1653         25th September 2014
1654       </div>
1655       <div class="body">
1656         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
1657 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
1658 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
1659 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
1660 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
1661 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
1662 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
1663 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
1664 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
1665 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
1666 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
1667 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
1668 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
1669
1670 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
1671 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
1672 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
1673 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
1674 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
1675 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
1676 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
1677 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
1678 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
1679 list</a>. :)</p>
1680
1681       </div>
1682       <div class="tags">
1683
1684
1685         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
1686
1687
1688       </div>
1689     </div>
1690     <div class="padding"></div>
1691
1692     <div class="entry">
1693       <div class="title">
1694         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
1695       </div>
1696       <div class="date">
1697         16th September 2014
1698       </div>
1699       <div class="body">
1700         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
1701 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
1702 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
1703 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
1704 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
1705 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
1706 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
1707 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
1708 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
1709 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
1710 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
1711 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
1712 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
1713 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
1714
1715 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
1716 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
1717 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
1718 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
1719 depend on the small and clever package
1720 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
1721 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
1722 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
1723 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
1724 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
1725 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
1726 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
1727 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
1728 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
1729 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
1730 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
1731
1732 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
1733 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
1734 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
1735 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
1736 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
1737 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
1738 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
1739 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
1740 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
1741 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
1742 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
1743 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
1744 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
1745 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
1746 dialog.</p>
1747
1748 <p><table>
1749
1750 <tr>
1751 <th>Machine/setup</th>
1752 <th>Original tasksel</th>
1753 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
1754 <th>Reduction</th>
1755 </tr>
1756
1757 <tr>
1758 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
1759 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
1760 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
1761 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
1762 </tr>
1763
1764 <tr>
1765 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
1766 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
1767 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
1768 <td>23 min 40%</td>
1769 </tr>
1770
1771 <tr>
1772 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
1773 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
1774 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
1775 <td>11 min 50%</td>
1776 </tr>
1777
1778 <tr>
1779 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
1780 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
1781 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
1782 <td>2 min 33%</td>
1783 </tr>
1784
1785 <tr>
1786 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
1787 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
1788 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
1789 <td>4 min 21%</td>
1790 </tr>
1791
1792 </table></p>
1793
1794 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
1795 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
1796 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
1797 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
1798 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
1799 installed.</p>
1800
1801 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
1802 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
1803 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
1804 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
1805 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
1806 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
1807 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
1808 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
1809 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
1810 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
1811 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
1812 for the entire installation.</p>
1813
1814 <p>I've implemented this in the
1815 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
1816 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
1817 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
1818 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
1819 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
1820
1821 <p><blockquote><pre>
1822 #!/bin/sh
1823 set -e
1824 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1825 info() {
1826     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
1827 }
1828 error() {
1829     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
1830 }
1831 override_install() {
1832     apt-install eatmydata || true
1833     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
1834         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1835             file=/usr/bin/$bin
1836             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
1837             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
1838                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
1839                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
1840                     > /target$file.edu
1841                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
1842                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1843                     --rename --quiet --add $file
1844                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
1845             else
1846                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
1847             fi
1848         done
1849     else
1850         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
1851     fi
1852 }
1853
1854 override_install
1855 </pre></blockquote></p>
1856
1857 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
1858 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
1859
1860 <p><blockquote><pre>
1861 #! /bin/sh -e
1862 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1863 error() {
1864     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
1865 }
1866 remove_install_override() {
1867     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1868         file=/usr/bin/$bin
1869         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
1870             rm /target$file
1871             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1872                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
1873             rm /target$file.edu
1874         else
1875             error "Missing divert for $file."
1876         fi
1877     done
1878     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
1879 }
1880
1881 remove_install_override
1882 </pre></blockquote></p>
1883
1884 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
1885 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
1886 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
1887
1888 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
1889 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
1890 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
1891 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
1892 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
1893 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
1894 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
1895 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
1896 everyone.</p>
1897
1898 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
1899 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
1900 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
1901 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
1902
1903 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
1904 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
1905 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1906 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
1907 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
1908
1909 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
1910 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
1911 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1912 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
1913 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
1914
1915       </div>
1916       <div class="tags">
1917
1918
1919         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1920
1921
1922       </div>
1923     </div>
1924     <div class="padding"></div>
1925
1926     <div class="entry">
1927       <div class="title">
1928         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
1929       </div>
1930       <div class="date">
1931         10th September 2014
1932       </div>
1933       <div class="body">
1934         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
1935 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
1936 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
1937 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
1938 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
1939 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
1940 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
1941 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
1942 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
1943 those problems are gone now.</p>
1944
1945 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
1946 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
1947 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
1948 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
1949 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
1950
1951 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
1952 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
1953 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
1954
1955 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
1956 line:</p>
1957
1958 <p><blockquote><pre>
1959 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
1960 </pre></blockquote></p>
1961
1962 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
1963 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
1964 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
1965 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
1966
1967 <p><blockquote><pre>
1968 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
1969 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
1970 %
1971 </pre></blockquote></p>
1972
1973 <p>Now if only
1974 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
1975 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
1976 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
1977 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
1978 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
1979 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
1980 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
1981 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
1982 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
1983
1984       </div>
1985       <div class="tags">
1986
1987
1988         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1989
1990
1991       </div>
1992     </div>
1993     <div class="padding"></div>
1994
1995     <div class="entry">
1996       <div class="title">
1997         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
1998       </div>
1999       <div class="date">
2000         17th June 2014
2001       </div>
2002       <div class="body">
2003         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2004 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
2005 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
2006 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
2007 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
2008
2009 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
2010 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
2011 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
2012 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
2013 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
2014 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
2015 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
2016 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
2017 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
2018 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
2019 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
2020 goals.</p>
2021
2022 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
2023 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
2024 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
2025 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
2026 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
2027 chapters together into one large web page (aka
2028 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
2029 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
2030 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
2031 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
2032 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
2033 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
2034 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
2035 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
2036 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
2037 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
2038 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
2039 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
2040 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
2041 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
2042 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
2043 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
2044 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
2045 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
2046
2047 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
2048 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
2049 track the English original.  For this we use the
2050 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
2051 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
2052 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
2053 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
2054 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
2055 files), which the translations update with the native language
2056 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
2057 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
2058 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
2059 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
2060 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
2061 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
2062 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
2063 of the documentation.</p>
2064
2065 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
2066 recommend using
2067 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
2068 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
2069 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
2070 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
2071 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
2072 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
2073 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
2074 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
2075
2076 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
2077 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
2078 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
2079 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
2080 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
2081 translated images by storing translated versions in
2082 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
2083 package maintainers know more.</p>
2084
2085 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
2086 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
2087 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
2088 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
2089 PDF version</a> or the
2090 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
2091 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
2092 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
2093
2094 <p>To learn more, check out
2095 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
2096 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
2097 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
2098 manual on the wiki</a> and
2099 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
2100 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
2101
2102       </div>
2103       <div class="tags">
2104
2105
2106         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2107
2108
2109       </div>
2110     </div>
2111     <div class="padding"></div>
2112
2113     <div class="entry">
2114       <div class="title">
2115         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
2116       </div>
2117       <div class="date">
2118         23rd April 2014
2119       </div>
2120       <div class="body">
2121         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
2122 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
2123 So I implemented one, using
2124 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
2125 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
2126 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
2127 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
2128 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
2129 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
2130
2131 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
2132 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
2133 packages to install.  The first part is in
2134 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
2135 this:</p>
2136
2137 <p><blockquote><pre>
2138 Task: isenkram
2139 Section: hardware
2140 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2141  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2142  proposed.
2143 Test-new-install: mark show
2144 Relevance: 8
2145 Packages: for-current-hardware
2146 </pre></blockquote></p>
2147
2148 <p>The second part is in
2149 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
2150 this:</p>
2151
2152 <p><blockquote><pre>
2153 #!/bin/sh
2154 #
2155 (
2156     isenkram-lookup
2157     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2158 ) | sort -u
2159 </pre></blockquote></p>
2160
2161 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
2162 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
2163 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
2164 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
2165 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
2166 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
2167
2168 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
2169 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
2170 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
2171 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
2172 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
2173 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
2174 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
2175 the python-apt code (bug
2176 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
2177 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
2178 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
2179 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
2180 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
2181 unstable today.</p>
2182
2183 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
2184 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
2185 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
2186 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
2187 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
2188 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
2189 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
2190 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
2191 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
2192
2193 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
2194 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
2195 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
2196 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
2197 package.  See also
2198 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
2199 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
2200 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
2201 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
2202
2203       </div>
2204       <div class="tags">
2205
2206
2207         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
2208
2209
2210       </div>
2211     </div>
2212     <div class="padding"></div>
2213
2214     <div class="entry">
2215       <div class="title">
2216         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
2217       </div>
2218       <div class="date">
2219         15th April 2014
2220       </div>
2221       <div class="body">
2222         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2223 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
2224 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
2225 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
2226 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
2227 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
2228
2229 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
2230 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
2231 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
2232 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
2233 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
2234 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
2235 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
2236
2237 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
2238 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
2239 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
2240 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
2241 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
2242 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
2243 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
2244 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
2245 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
2246 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
2247 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
2248 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
2249
2250 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
2251 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
2252 become root:</p>
2253
2254 <p><pre>
2255 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2256   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2257   u-boot-tools
2258 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2259   freedom-maker
2260 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2261 </pre></p>
2262
2263 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2264 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
2265 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
2266 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
2267 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
2268 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
2269 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
2270 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
2271
2272 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2273 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2274 the preseed values:</p>
2275
2276 <p><pre>
2277 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2278 </pre></p>
2279
2280 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
2281 it still work.</p>
2282
2283 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
2284 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
2285 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
2286 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
2287 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
2288 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
2289 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
2290
2291 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2292 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2293 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2294 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2295 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2296 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2297
2298       </div>
2299       <div class="tags">
2300
2301
2302         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2303
2304
2305       </div>
2306     </div>
2307     <div class="padding"></div>
2308
2309     <div class="entry">
2310       <div class="title">
2311         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
2312       </div>
2313       <div class="date">
2314          9th April 2014
2315       </div>
2316       <div class="body">
2317         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
2318 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
2319 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
2320 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
2321 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
2322 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
2323 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
2324 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
2325 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
2326 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
2327 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
2328 have looked at a system called
2329 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
2330 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
2331
2332 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
2333 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
2334 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
2335 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
2336 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
2337 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
2338 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
2339 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
2340 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
2341 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
2342 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
2343 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
2344 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
2345
2346 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
2347 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
2348 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
2349 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
2350 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
2351 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
2352 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
2353 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
2354 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
2355 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
2356 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
2357 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
2358 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
2359 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
2360 account.</p>
2361
2362 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
2363 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
2364 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
2365 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
2366 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
2367 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
2368 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
2369
2370 <p><blockquote><pre>
2371 [s3c]
2372 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2373 backend-login: API-login
2374 backend-password: API-password
2375 fs-passphrase: local-password
2376 </pre></blockquote></p>
2377
2378 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
2379 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
2380 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
2381 details and password to create it:</p>
2382
2383 <p><blockquote><pre>
2384 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
2385 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2386   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2387 Enter backend login:
2388 Enter backend password:
2389 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
2390 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
2391 Enter encryption password:
2392 Confirm encryption password:
2393 Generating random encryption key...
2394 Creating metadata tables...
2395 Dumping metadata...
2396 ..objects..
2397 ..blocks..
2398 ..inodes..
2399 ..inode_blocks..
2400 ..symlink_targets..
2401 ..names..
2402 ..contents..
2403 ..ext_attributes..
2404 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2405 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
2406 # </pre></blockquote></p>
2407
2408 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
2409
2410 <p><blockquote><pre>
2411 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2412   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2413 Using 4 upload threads.
2414 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
2415 Reading metadata...
2416 ..objects..
2417 ..blocks..
2418 ..inodes..
2419 ..inode_blocks..
2420 ..symlink_targets..
2421 ..names..
2422 ..contents..
2423 ..ext_attributes..
2424 Mounting filesystem...
2425 # df -h /s3ql
2426 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
2427 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
2428 #
2429 </pre></blockquote></p>
2430
2431 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
2432 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
2433 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
2434 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
2435 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
2436 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
2437
2438 <p><blockquote><pre>
2439 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
2440 #
2441 </pre></blockquote></p>
2442
2443 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
2444 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
2445 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
2446 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
2447 file system:</p>
2448
2449 <p><blockquote><pre>
2450 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2451 Using cached metadata.
2452 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
2453 Checking DB integrity...
2454 Creating temporary extra indices...
2455 Checking lost+found...
2456 Checking cached objects...
2457 Checking names (refcounts)...
2458 Checking contents (names)...
2459 Checking contents (inodes)...
2460 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
2461 Checking objects (reference counts)...
2462 Checking objects (backend)...
2463 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
2464 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
2465 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
2466 Checking objects (sizes)...
2467 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
2468 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
2469 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
2470 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
2471 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
2472 Checking inodes (sizes)...
2473 Checking extended attributes (names)...
2474 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
2475 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
2476 Checking directory reachability...
2477 Checking unix conventions...
2478 Checking referential integrity...
2479 Dropping temporary indices...
2480 Backing up old metadata...
2481 Dumping metadata...
2482 ..objects..
2483 ..blocks..
2484 ..inodes..
2485 ..inode_blocks..
2486 ..symlink_targets..
2487 ..names..
2488 ..contents..
2489 ..ext_attributes..
2490 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2491 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
2492 #
2493 </pre></blockquote></p>
2494
2495 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
2496 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
2497 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
2498 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
2499 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
2500 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
2501 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
2502 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
2503 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
2504 working set.</p>
2505
2506 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
2507 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
2508 busy:</p>
2509
2510 <p><blockquote><pre>
2511 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2512   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2513 Using 8 upload threads.
2514 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
2515 #
2516 </pre></blockquote></p>
2517
2518 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
2519 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
2520 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
2521 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
2522 s3qlctrl:
2523
2524 <p><blockquote><pre>
2525 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
2526 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
2527 #
2528 </pre></blockquote></p>
2529
2530 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
2531 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
2532 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
2533 a report:</p>
2534
2535 <p><blockquote><pre>
2536 # s3qlstat /s3ql
2537 Directory entries:    9141
2538 Inodes:               9143
2539 Data blocks:          8851
2540 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
2541 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
2542 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
2543 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
2544 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
2545 #
2546 </pre></blockquote></p>
2547
2548 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
2549 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
2550 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
2551 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
2552 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
2553 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
2554 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
2555 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
2556 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
2557 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
2558 best.</p>
2559
2560 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
2561 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
2562 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
2563 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
2564 poster is titled
2565 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
2566 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
2567 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
2568 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
2569 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
2570
2571 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
2572 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
2573 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
2574 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
2575 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
2576 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
2577 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
2578 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
2579
2580 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
2581 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
2582 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
2583 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
2584 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
2585 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
2586 only read from it.</p>
2587
2588 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2589 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2590 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2591
2592       </div>
2593       <div class="tags">
2594
2595
2596         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2597
2598
2599       </div>
2600     </div>
2601     <div class="padding"></div>
2602
2603     <div class="entry">
2604       <div class="title">
2605         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
2606       </div>
2607       <div class="date">
2608         14th March 2014
2609       </div>
2610       <div class="body">
2611         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2612 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
2613 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
2614 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
2615 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
2616 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
2617 release (0.2).</p>
2618
2619 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
2620 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
2621 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
2622 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
2623 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
2624 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
2625 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
2626 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
2627 and build using
2628 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
2629 with a user with sudo access to become root:
2630
2631 <pre>
2632 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2633   freedom-maker
2634 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2635   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2636   u-boot-tools
2637 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2638 </pre>
2639
2640 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2641 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
2642 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
2643 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
2644 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
2645 kpartx call.</p>
2646
2647 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2648 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2649 the preseed values:</p>
2650
2651 <pre>
2652 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2653 </pre>
2654
2655 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
2656 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
2657 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
2658 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
2659 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
2660 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
2661
2662 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2663 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2664 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2665 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2666 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2667 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2668
2669       </div>
2670       <div class="tags">
2671
2672
2673         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2674
2675
2676       </div>
2677     </div>
2678     <div class="padding"></div>
2679
2680     <div class="entry">
2681       <div class="title">
2682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
2683       </div>
2684       <div class="date">
2685         22nd February 2014
2686       </div>
2687       <div class="body">
2688         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
2689 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
2690 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
2691 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
2692 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
2693 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
2694 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
2695 proper home since then.</p>
2696
2697 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
2698 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
2699 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
2700 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
2701 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
2702
2703 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
2704 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
2705 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
2706 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
2707 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
2708 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
2709 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
2710 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
2711 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
2712
2713       </div>
2714       <div class="tags">
2715
2716
2717         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2718
2719
2720       </div>
2721     </div>
2722     <div class="padding"></div>
2723
2724     <div class="entry">
2725       <div class="title">
2726         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
2727       </div>
2728       <div class="date">
2729          3rd February 2014
2730       </div>
2731       <div class="body">
2732         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
2733 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
2734 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
2735 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
2736 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
2737 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
2738 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
2739 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
2740 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
2741
2742 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
2743 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
2744 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
2745 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
2746 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
2747 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
2748
2749 <p><blockquote><pre>
2750 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
2751 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
2752 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
2753 dhclient /dev/eth0
2754 </pre></blockquote></p>
2755
2756 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
2757 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
2758 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
2759
2760 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
2761 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
2762 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
2763 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
2764 side.</p>
2765
2766 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
2767 stuff:</p>
2768
2769 <p><blockquote><pre>
2770 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2771 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
2772 EOF
2773 apt-get update
2774 apt-get dist-upgrade
2775 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
2776     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
2777 update-alternatives --config runsystem
2778 </pre></blockquote></p>
2779
2780 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
2781 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
2782 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
2783 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
2784 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
2785 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
2786 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
2787 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
2788 ssh instead.
2789
2790 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
2791 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
2792 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
2793 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
2794 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
2795 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
2796
2797 <p><blockquote><pre>
2798 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2799 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
2800 EOF
2801 </pre></blockquote></p>
2802
2803 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
2804 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
2805 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
2806 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
2807
2808 <p><blockquote><pre>
2809 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
2810 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
2811 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
2812 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
2813 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
2814 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
2815 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
2816 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
2817 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
2818 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
2819 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
2820 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
2821 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
2822 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
2823 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
2824 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
2825 #
2826 </pre></blockquote></p>
2827
2828 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
2829 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
2830 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
2831 command line stuff.<p>
2832
2833       </div>
2834       <div class="tags">
2835
2836
2837         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2838
2839
2840       </div>
2841     </div>
2842     <div class="padding"></div>
2843
2844     <div class="entry">
2845       <div class="title">
2846         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
2847       </div>
2848       <div class="date">
2849         14th January 2014
2850       </div>
2851       <div class="body">
2852         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
2853 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
2854 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
2855 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
2856 the source.  The company behind it provide
2857 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
2858 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
2859 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
2860 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
2861 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
2862 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
2863 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
2864 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
2865 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
2866 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
2867 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
2868 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
2869 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
2870 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
2871 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
2872 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
2873 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
2874 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
2875 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
2876
2877 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
2878
2879 <ul>
2880
2881   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
2882   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
2883   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
2884
2885 </ul>
2886
2887 <p>You can
2888 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2889 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2890 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2891 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2892 include a test suite check.</p>
2893
2894       </div>
2895       <div class="tags">
2896
2897
2898         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2899
2900
2901       </div>
2902     </div>
2903     <div class="padding"></div>
2904
2905     <div class="entry">
2906       <div class="title">
2907         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
2908       </div>
2909       <div class="date">
2910         24th November 2013
2911       </div>
2912       <div class="body">
2913         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
2914 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
2915 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
2916 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
2917 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
2918 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
2919 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
2920 is working on.  I checked the
2921 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
2922 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
2923 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
2924 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
2925 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
2926 These are the release notes:</p>
2927
2928 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
2929
2930 <ul>
2931
2932   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
2933    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
2934    up.</li>
2935
2936   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
2937
2938   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
2939    Matthias Klose.</li>
2940
2941   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
2942    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
2943
2944   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
2945    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
2946    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
2947
2948 </ul>
2949
2950 <p>You can
2951 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2952 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2953 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2954 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2955 include a testsuite check.</p>
2956
2957       </div>
2958       <div class="tags">
2959
2960
2961         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2962
2963
2964       </div>
2965     </div>
2966     <div class="padding"></div>
2967
2968     <div class="entry">
2969       <div class="title">
2970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
2971       </div>
2972       <div class="date">
2973          2nd November 2013
2974       </div>
2975       <div class="body">
2976         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
2977 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
2978 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
2979 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
2980 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
2981
2982 <p><pre>
2983 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
2984 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
2985 # Provides:          rsyslog
2986 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
2987 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
2988 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
2989 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
2990 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
2991 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
2992 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
2993 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
2994 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
2995 ### END INIT INFO
2996 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
2997 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
2998 </pre></p>
2999
3000 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
3001 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
3002 info/comments.</p>
3003
3004 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
3005 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
3006
3007 <p><pre>
3008 #!/bin/sh
3009
3010 # Define LSB log_* functions.
3011 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
3012 # and status_of_proc is working.
3013 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
3014
3015 #
3016 # Function that starts the daemon/service
3017
3018 #
3019 do_start()
3020 {
3021         # Return
3022         #   0 if daemon has been started
3023         #   1 if daemon was already running
3024         #   2 if daemon could not be started
3025         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
3026                 || return 1
3027         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
3028                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
3029                 || return 2
3030         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
3031         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
3032         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
3033 }
3034
3035 #
3036 # Function that stops the daemon/service
3037 #
3038 do_stop()
3039 {
3040         # Return
3041         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
3042         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
3043         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
3044         #   other if a failure occurred
3045         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3046         RETVAL="$?"
3047         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
3048         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
3049         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
3050         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
3051         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
3052         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
3053         # sleep for some time.
3054         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
3055         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
3056         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
3057         rm -f $PIDFILE
3058         return "$RETVAL"
3059 }
3060
3061 #
3062 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
3063 #
3064 do_reload() {
3065         #
3066         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
3067         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
3068         # then implement that here.
3069         #
3070         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3071         return 0
3072 }
3073
3074 SCRIPTNAME=$1
3075 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
3076 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
3077 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
3078     script="$1"
3079     shift
3080     . $script
3081 else
3082     exit 0
3083 fi
3084
3085 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
3086 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
3087
3088 # Exit if the package is not installed
3089 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
3090
3091 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
3092 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
3093
3094 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
3095 . /lib/init/vars.sh
3096
3097 case "$1" in
3098   start)
3099         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
3100         do_start
3101         case "$?" in
3102                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3103                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3104         esac
3105         ;;
3106   stop)
3107         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
3108         do_stop
3109         case "$?" in
3110                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3111                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3112         esac
3113         ;;
3114   status)
3115         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
3116         ;;
3117   #reload|force-reload)
3118         #
3119         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
3120         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
3121         #
3122         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
3123         #do_reload
3124         #log_end_msg $?
3125         #;;
3126   restart|force-reload)
3127         #
3128         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
3129         # 'force-reload' alias
3130         #
3131         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
3132         do_stop
3133         case "$?" in
3134           0|1)
3135                 do_start
3136                 case "$?" in
3137                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
3138                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
3139                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
3140                 esac
3141                 ;;
3142           *)
3143                 # Failed to stop
3144                 log_end_msg 1
3145                 ;;
3146         esac
3147         ;;
3148   *)
3149         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
3150         exit 3
3151         ;;
3152 esac
3153
3154 :
3155 </pre></p>
3156
3157 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
3158 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
3159 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
3160 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
3161
3162 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
3163 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
3164 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
3165 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
3166 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
3167
3168       </div>
3169       <div class="tags">
3170
3171
3172         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3173
3174
3175       </div>
3176     </div>
3177     <div class="padding"></div>
3178
3179     <div class="entry">
3180       <div class="title">
3181         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
3182       </div>
3183       <div class="date">
3184          1st November 2013
3185       </div>
3186       <div class="body">
3187         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
3188 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
3189 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
3190 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
3191 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
3192 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
3193 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
3194 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
3195 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
3196 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
3197 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
3198 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
3199
3200 <p>The source is now available from
3201 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
3202
3203       </div>
3204       <div class="tags">
3205
3206
3207         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3208
3209
3210       </div>
3211     </div>
3212     <div class="padding"></div>
3213
3214     <div class="entry">
3215       <div class="title">
3216         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
3217       </div>
3218       <div class="date">
3219         27th October 2013
3220       </div>
3221       <div class="body">
3222         <p>The
3223 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
3224 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
3225 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
3226 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
3227 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
3228 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
3229 of a plan to simplify the build system for
3230 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
3231 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
3232 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
3233 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
3234 Raspberry Pi.</p>
3235
3236 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
3237 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
3238 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
3239 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
3240 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
3241 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
3242 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
3243 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
3244 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
3245 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
3246 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
3247 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
3248 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
3249 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
3250 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
3251 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
3252 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
3253 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
3254 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
3255 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
3256 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
3257 available from
3258 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
3259 upstream project page</a>.</p>
3260
3261 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
3262 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
3263 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
3264 list:</p>
3265
3266 <p><pre>
3267 #!/bin/sh
3268 set -e # Exit on first error
3269 rootdir="$1"
3270 cd "$rootdir"
3271 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
3272 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
3273 EOF
3274 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
3275 # install a kernel somewhere too.
3276 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
3277     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3278 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3279 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
3280 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
3281 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
3282 </pre></p>
3283
3284 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
3285 to build the image:</p>
3286
3287 <pre>
3288 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
3289     --variant minbase \
3290     --arch armel \
3291     --distribution jessie \
3292     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
3293     --image test.img \
3294     --size 600M \
3295     --bootsize 64M \
3296     --boottype vfat \
3297     --log-level debug \
3298     --verbose \
3299     --no-kernel \
3300     --no-extlinux \
3301     --root-password raspberry \
3302     --hostname raspberrypi \
3303     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
3304     --customize `pwd`/customize \
3305     --package netbase \
3306     --package git-core \
3307     --package binutils \
3308     --package ca-certificates \
3309     --package wget \
3310     --package kmod
3311 </pre></p>
3312
3313 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
3314 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
3315 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
3316 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
3317 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
3318 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
3319 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
3320
3321 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
3322 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
3323 build dependency list.</p>
3324
3325 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
3326 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
3327 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
3328 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
3329
3330       </div>
3331       <div class="tags">
3332
3333
3334         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
3335
3336
3337       </div>
3338     </div>
3339     <div class="padding"></div>
3340
3341     <div class="entry">
3342       <div class="title">
3343         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
3344       </div>
3345       <div class="date">
3346         15th October 2013
3347       </div>
3348       <div class="body">
3349         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
3350 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
3351 these. :)</p>
3352
3353 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
3354 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
3355 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
3356 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
3357 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
3358 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
3359 hope you will to. :)</p>
3360
3361 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
3362 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
3363 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
3364 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
3365 donated.  Are you next?</p>
3366
3367 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
3368 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
3369 statement under the heading
3370 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
3371 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
3372 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
3373 too.</p>
3374
3375       </div>
3376       <div class="tags">
3377
3378
3379         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3380
3381
3382       </div>
3383     </div>
3384     <div class="padding"></div>
3385
3386     <div class="entry">
3387       <div class="title">
3388         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
3389       </div>
3390       <div class="date">
3391         27th September 2013
3392       </div>
3393       <div class="body">
3394         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
3395 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
3396 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
3397 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
3398
3399 <ul>
3400
3401 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
3402 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
3403
3404 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
3405 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3406
3407 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
3408 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
3409 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
3410 (Youtube)</li>
3411
3412 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
3413 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
3414
3415 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
3416 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3417
3418 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
3419 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
3420 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
3421
3422 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
3423 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
3424 (Youtube)</li>
3425
3426 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
3427 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
3428
3429 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
3430 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
3431
3432 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
3433 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
3434 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
3435
3436 </ul>
3437
3438 <p>A larger list is available from
3439 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
3440 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
3441
3442 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
3443 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
3444 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
3445 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
3446 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
3447 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
3448 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
3449 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
3450 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
3451 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3452 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3453
3454       </div>
3455       <div class="tags">
3456
3457
3458         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3459
3460
3461       </div>
3462     </div>
3463     <div class="padding"></div>
3464
3465     <div class="entry">
3466       <div class="title">
3467         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
3468       </div>
3469       <div class="date">
3470         10th September 2013
3471       </div>
3472       <div class="body">
3473         <p>I was introduced to the
3474 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
3475 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
3476 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
3477 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
3478 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
3479 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
3480 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
3481 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
3482
3483 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
3484 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
3485 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
3486 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
3487 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
3488
3489 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
3490 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
3491 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
3492 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
3493 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
3494 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
3495 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
3496 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
3497 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
3498 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
3499 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
3500 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
3501 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
3502 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
3503 missing in Debian).</p>
3504
3505 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
3506 scripts
3507 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
3508 and a administrative web interface
3509 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
3510 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
3511 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
3512 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
3513 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
3514 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
3515 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
3516 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
3517 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
3518 this is really working yet, see
3519 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
3520 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
3521 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
3522 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
3523 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
3524 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
3525 with lots of half baked features.</p>
3526
3527 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
3528 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
3529 at.</p>
3530
3531 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
3532
3533 <ol>
3534
3535 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
3536 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
3537 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
3538 to the Debian installer:<p>
3539 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
3540
3541 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
3542 install on.</li>
3543
3544 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
3545 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
3546
3547 </ol>
3548
3549 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
3550
3551 <ol>
3552
3553 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
3554 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
3555 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
3556 <pre>
3557 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
3558 </pre></li>
3559 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
3560 <pre>
3561 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
3562    apt-key add -
3563 apt-get update
3564 apt-get install freedombox-setup
3565 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
3566 </pre></li>
3567 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
3568
3569 </ol>
3570
3571 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
3572 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
3573 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
3574 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
3575 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
3576
3577 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
3578 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
3579 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
3580 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
3581
3582 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
3583 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
3584 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
3585 irc.debian.org and the
3586 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
3587 mailing list</a>.</p>
3588
3589 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
3590 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
3591 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
3592 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
3593 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
3594 default password is 'secret'.</p>
3595
3596       </div>
3597       <div class="tags">
3598
3599
3600         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3601
3602
3603       </div>
3604     </div>
3605     <div class="padding"></div>
3606
3607     <div class="entry">
3608       <div class="title">
3609         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
3610       </div>
3611       <div class="date">
3612         18th August 2013
3613       </div>
3614       <div class="body">
3615         <p>Earlier, I reported about
3616 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
3617 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
3618 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
3619 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
3620 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
3621 currently on the disk.</p>
3622
3623 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
3624 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
3625 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
3626 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
3627 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
3628 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
3629 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
3630 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
3631 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
3632 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
3633 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
3634 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
3635 the broken disks.</p>
3636
3637       </div>
3638       <div class="tags">
3639
3640
3641         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3642
3643
3644       </div>
3645     </div>
3646     <div class="padding"></div>
3647
3648     <div class="entry">
3649       <div class="title">
3650         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
3651       </div>
3652       <div class="date">
3653         17th July 2013
3654       </div>
3655       <div class="body">
3656         <p>Today I switched to
3657 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
3658 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
3659 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
3660 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
3661 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
3662 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
3663 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
3664 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
3665 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
3666 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
3667 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
3668 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
3669 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
3670 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
3671 station from now on.</p>
3672
3673 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
3674 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
3675 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
3676 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
3677 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
3678 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
3679 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
3680 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
3681 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
3682 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
3683 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
3684 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
3685
3686 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
3687 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
3688 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
3689 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
3690 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
3691 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
3692 parameters are tuned:</p>
3693
3694 <ul>
3695
3696 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
3697     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
3698
3699 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
3700     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
3701     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
3702
3703 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
3704     systems.</li>
3705
3706 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
3707     /etc/fstab.</li>
3708
3709 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
3710
3711 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
3712     cron.daily).</li>
3713
3714 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
3715     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
3716
3717 </ul>
3718
3719 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
3720 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
3721 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
3722 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
3723 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
3724 from getting the data on the disk (see
3725 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
3726 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
3727 right thing to do.</p>
3728
3729 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
3730 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
3731 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
3732
3733 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
3734 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
3735 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
3736 instead of during my work.</p>
3737
3738 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
3739 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
3740
3741 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
3742 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
3743 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
3744
3745 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
3746 there.</p>
3747
3748 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
3749 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
3750 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
3751 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
3752 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
3753 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
3754 back.</p>
3755
3756       </div>
3757       <div class="tags">
3758
3759
3760         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3761
3762
3763       </div>
3764     </div>
3765     <div class="padding"></div>
3766
3767     <div class="entry">
3768       <div class="title">
3769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
3770       </div>
3771       <div class="date">
3772         10th July 2013
3773       </div>
3774       <div class="body">
3775         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
3776 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
3777 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
3778 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
3779 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
3780 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
3781 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
3782 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
3783
3784 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
3785 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
3786 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
3787 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
3788 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
3789 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
3790 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
3791 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
3792 lock up when I download a new
3793 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
3794 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
3795 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
3796
3797 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3798 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
3799 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3800 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
3801 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3802 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3803
3804 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3805 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
3806 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3807 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
3808 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3809 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3810
3811 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
3812 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
3813 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
3814 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
3815 exist).</p>
3816
3817       </div>
3818       <div class="tags">
3819
3820
3821         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3822
3823
3824       </div>
3825     </div>
3826     <div class="padding"></div>
3827
3828     <div class="entry">
3829       <div class="title">
3830         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
3831       </div>
3832       <div class="date">
3833          9th July 2013
3834       </div>
3835       <div class="body">
3836         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
3837 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
3838 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
3839 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
3840 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3841 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
3842 Bitraf</a>.</p>
3843
3844 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
3845 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
3846 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
3847 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
3848 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
3849
3850       </div>
3851       <div class="tags">
3852
3853
3854         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3855
3856
3857       </div>
3858     </div>
3859     <div class="padding"></div>
3860
3861     <div class="entry">
3862       <div class="title">
3863         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
3864       </div>
3865       <div class="date">
3866          5th July 2013
3867       </div>
3868       <div class="body">
3869         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
3870 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
3871 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
3872 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
3873 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
3874 ended up picking a
3875 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
3876 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
3877 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
3878 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
3879 on that below.</p>
3880
3881 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3882 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3883 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3884 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3885 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3886 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
3887 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
3888 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
3889 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
3890
3891 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
3892 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
3893 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
3894 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
3895 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
3896 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
3897 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
3898
3899 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
3900 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
3901
3902 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
3903 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
3904 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
3905 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
3906 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
3907 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
3908 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
3909 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
3910 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
3911 kernel developers as
3912 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
3913 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
3914 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
3915 Lenovo forums, both for
3916 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
3917 2012-11-10</a> and for
3918 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
3919 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
3920 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
3921 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
3922 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
3923 There is even a
3924 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
3925 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
3926 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
3927
3928 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
3929 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
3930 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
3931 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
3932 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
3933 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
3934 fixed. :)</p>
3935
3936       </div>
3937       <div class="tags">
3938
3939
3940         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3941
3942
3943       </div>
3944     </div>
3945     <div class="padding"></div>
3946
3947     <div class="entry">
3948       <div class="title">
3949         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
3950       </div>
3951       <div class="date">
3952          4th July 2013
3953       </div>
3954       <div class="body">
3955         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
3956 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
3957 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
3958 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
3959 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
3960 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
3961 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
3962 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
3963 with an expencive door stop.</p>
3964
3965 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3966 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3967 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3968 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3969 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3970 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
3971 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
3972
3973 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
3974 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
3975 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
3976 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
3977 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
3978 new laptop now. :)</p>
3979
3980 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
3981
3982       </div>
3983       <div class="tags">
3984
3985
3986         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3987
3988
3989       </div>
3990     </div>
3991     <div class="padding"></div>
3992
3993     <div class="entry">
3994       <div class="title">
3995         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
3996       </div>
3997       <div class="date">
3998         25th June 2013
3999       </div>
4000       <div class="body">
4001         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
4002 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
4003 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
4004 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
4005 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
4006 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
4007 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
4008 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
4009 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
4010 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
4011 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
4012
4013 <p><pre>
4014 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
4015 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
4016 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
4017 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
4018 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
4019 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
4020 firmware-ipw2x00
4021 firmware-ipw2x00
4022 Preconfiguring packages ...
4023 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
4024 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
4025 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
4026 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
4027 #
4028 </pre></p>
4029
4030 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
4031 printed instead:</p>
4032
4033 <p><pre>
4034 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
4035 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
4036 #
4037 </pre></p>
4038
4039 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
4040 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
4041
4042 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
4043 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
4044 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
4045 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
4046 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
4047 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
4048 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
4049 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
4050 machine.</p>
4051
4052 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
4053 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
4054 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
4055 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
4056 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
4057 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
4058
4059       </div>
4060       <div class="tags">
4061
4062
4063         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4064
4065
4066       </div>
4067     </div>
4068     <div class="padding"></div>
4069
4070     <div class="entry">
4071       <div class="title">
4072         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
4073       </div>
4074       <div class="date">
4075         11th June 2013
4076       </div>
4077       <div class="body">
4078         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
4079 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
4080 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
4081 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
4082 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
4083 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
4084 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
4085 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
4086 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
4087 i915 driver used by the
4088 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4089 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
4090
4091 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
4092 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
4093 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
4094 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
4095 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
4096
4097 <pre>
4098 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
4099 update-initramfs -u -k all
4100 </pre>
4101
4102 <p>Since March 2012 there is
4103 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
4104 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
4105 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
4106 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
4107 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
4108 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
4109 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
4110 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
4111 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
4112 number.</p>
4113
4114 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
4115 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
4116
4117 <p><pre>
4118 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
4119     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
4120     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
4121  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
4122  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
4123     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
4124  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
4125     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
4126  Latency: 0
4127  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
4128  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
4129  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
4130  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
4131  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
4132  Capabilities: <access denied>
4133  Kernel driver in use: i915
4134 </pre></p>
4135
4136 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
4137
4138 <p><pre>
4139 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
4140        ...
4141         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
4142         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
4143        ...
4144 }
4145 </pre></p>
4146
4147 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
4148 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
4149 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
4150 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
4151 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
4152 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
4153 yet shown up in
4154 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
4155 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
4156 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
4157 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
4158 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
4159 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
4160
4161 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
4162 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
4163 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
4164 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
4165 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
4166 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
4167 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
4168 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
4169 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
4170 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
4171 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
4172 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
4173
4174 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
4175 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
4176 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
4177 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
4178 backlight.</p>
4179
4180       </div>
4181       <div class="tags">
4182
4183
4184         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4185
4186
4187       </div>
4188     </div>
4189     <div class="padding"></div>
4190
4191     <div class="entry">
4192       <div class="title">
4193         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
4194       </div>
4195       <div class="date">
4196         27th May 2013
4197       </div>
4198       <div class="body">
4199         <p>Two days ago, I asked
4200 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
4201 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
4202 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
4203 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
4204 and Windows 8.</p>
4205
4206 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
4207 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
4208 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
4209 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
4210 enough to tell.</p>
4211
4212 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
4213 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
4214 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
4215 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
4216 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
4217 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
4218 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
4219 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
4220 to follow.</p>
4221
4222 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
4223 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
4224 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
4225 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
4226 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
4227 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
4228 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
4229 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
4230
4231 <p>I've updated the
4232 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
4233 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
4234 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
4235 machine.</p>
4236
4237 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
4238 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
4239
4240       </div>
4241       <div class="tags">
4242
4243
4244         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4245
4246
4247       </div>
4248     </div>
4249     <div class="padding"></div>
4250
4251     <div class="entry">
4252       <div class="title">
4253         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
4254       </div>
4255       <div class="date">
4256         25th May 2013
4257       </div>
4258       <div class="body">
4259         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
4260 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
4261 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
4262 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
4263 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
4264 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
4265
4266 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
4267 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
4268 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
4269 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
4270 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
4271 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
4272 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
4273 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
4274 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
4275 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
4276
4277 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
4278 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4279 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
4280 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
4281 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
4282 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
4283
4284 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
4285 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
4286 on new Laptops?</p>
4287
4288       </div>
4289       <div class="tags">
4290
4291
4292         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4293
4294
4295       </div>
4296     </div>
4297     <div class="padding"></div>
4298
4299     <div class="entry">
4300       <div class="title">
4301         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
4302       </div>
4303       <div class="date">
4304         17th May 2013
4305       </div>
4306       <div class="body">
4307         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
4308 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
4309 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
4310 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
4311 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
4312 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
4313 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
4314 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
4315 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
4316 donate some money</a>.
4317
4318 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
4319 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
4320 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
4321 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
4322 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
4323
4324 <p>The script,
4325 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
4326 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
4327 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
4328 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
4329
4330 <ol>
4331
4332 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
4333 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
4334 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
4335     our configuration.</li>
4336 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
4337     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
4338     according to the profile specified in the config above,
4339     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
4340 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
4341     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
4342 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
4343
4344 </ol>
4345
4346 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
4347 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
4348 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
4349 the needed packages.</p>
4350
4351 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
4352 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
4353 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
4354 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
4355 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
4356 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
4357
4358 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
4359 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
4360 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
4361
4362 <p><pre>
4363 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
4364 DESKTOP="lxde"
4365 </pre></p>
4366
4367 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
4368 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
4369 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
4370 boot.</p>
4371
4372       </div>
4373       <div class="tags">
4374
4375
4376         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4377
4378
4379       </div>
4380     </div>
4381     <div class="padding"></div>
4382
4383     <div class="entry">
4384       <div class="title">
4385         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
4386       </div>
4387       <div class="date">
4388         11th May 2013
4389       </div>
4390       <div class="body">
4391         <P>In January,
4392 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
4393 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
4394 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
4395 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
4396 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
4397 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
4398 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
4399 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
4400 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
4401 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
4402 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
4403 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
4404
4405 <p><table>
4406 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
4407 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
4408 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
4409 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
4410 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
4411 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
4412 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
4413 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
4414 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
4415 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
4416 </table></p>
4417
4418 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
4419 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
4420 available in experimental.</p>
4421
4422 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
4423 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
4424 for LEGO designers.</p>
4425
4426       </div>
4427       <div class="tags">
4428
4429
4430         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
4431
4432
4433       </div>
4434     </div>
4435     <div class="padding"></div>
4436
4437     <div class="entry">
4438       <div class="title">
4439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
4440       </div>
4441       <div class="date">
4442          5th May 2013
4443       </div>
4444       <div class="body">
4445         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
4446 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
4447 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
4448 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
4449 soon.</p>
4450
4451 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
4452 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
4453 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
4454 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
4455 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
4456 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
4457 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
4458 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
4459 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
4460 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
4461 Edu.</a>
4462
4463 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
4464 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
4465 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
4466 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
4467 follow.<p>
4468
4469       </div>
4470       <div class="tags">
4471
4472
4473         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4474
4475
4476       </div>
4477     </div>
4478     <div class="padding"></div>
4479
4480     <div class="entry">
4481       <div class="title">
4482         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
4483       </div>
4484       <div class="date">
4485          3rd April 2013
4486       </div>
4487       <div class="body">
4488         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
4489 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
4490 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
4491 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
4492
4493 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
4494 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
4495 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
4496 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
4497 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
4498 BTS. :)</p>
4499
4500       </div>
4501       <div class="tags">
4502
4503
4504         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4505
4506
4507       </div>
4508     </div>
4509     <div class="padding"></div>
4510
4511     <div class="entry">
4512       <div class="title">
4513         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
4514       </div>
4515       <div class="date">
4516          2nd February 2013
4517       </div>
4518       <div class="body">
4519         <p>My
4520 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
4521 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
4522 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
4523 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
4524 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
4525 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
4526 version too.</p>
4527
4528 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
4529 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
4530 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
4531 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
4532 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
4533 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
4534 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
4535 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
4536
4537 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
4538 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
4539 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
4540 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
4541 it. :)</p>
4542
4543 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4544 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4545 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4546
4547       </div>
4548       <div class="tags">
4549
4550
4551         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4552
4553
4554       </div>
4555     </div>
4556     <div class="padding"></div>
4557
4558     <div class="entry">
4559       <div class="title">
4560         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
4561       </div>
4562       <div class="date">
4563         22nd January 2013
4564       </div>
4565       <div class="body">
4566         <p>Yesterday, I
4567 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
4568 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
4569 pluggable hardware devices, which I
4570 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
4571 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
4572 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
4573 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
4574 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
4575 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
4576 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
4577 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
4578 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
4579 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
4580
4581 <pre>
4582 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
4583 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
4584 </pre>
4585
4586 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
4587 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
4588 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
4589 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
4590
4591 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
4592 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
4593 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
4594 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
4595 word.</p>
4596
4597 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
4598 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
4599 process.</p>
4600
4601 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
4602 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
4603
4604       </div>
4605       <div class="tags">
4606
4607
4608         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4609
4610
4611       </div>
4612     </div>
4613     <div class="padding"></div>
4614
4615     <div class="entry">
4616       <div class="title">
4617         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
4618       </div>
4619       <div class="date">
4620         21st January 2013
4621       </div>
4622       <div class="body">
4623         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
4624 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
4625 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
4626 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
4627 it, fetch the
4628 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
4629 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
4630 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
4631 autostart script.</p>
4632
4633 <p>The design is simple:</p>
4634
4635 <ul>
4636
4637 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
4638 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
4639
4640 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
4641 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
4642 initially did.</li>
4643
4644 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
4645 the APT database, a database
4646 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
4647 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
4648
4649 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
4650 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
4651 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
4652 package or packages.</li>
4653
4654 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
4655 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
4656
4657 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
4658 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
4659
4660 </ul>
4661
4662 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
4663 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
4664 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
4665 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
4666
4667 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
4668 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
4669 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
4670 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
4671 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
4672
4673 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
4674 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
4675 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
4676 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
4677 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
4678 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
4679 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
4680 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
4681
4682 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
4683 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
4684 '<tt>svn checkout
4685 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
4686 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
4687 devscripts package.</p>
4688
4689 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
4690 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
4691 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
4692 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
4693 instructions</a> for details.</p>
4694
4695       </div>
4696       <div class="tags">
4697
4698
4699         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
4700
4701
4702       </div>
4703     </div>
4704     <div class="padding"></div>
4705
4706     <div class="entry">
4707       <div class="title">
4708         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
4709       </div>
4710       <div class="date">
4711         19th January 2013
4712       </div>
4713       <div class="body">
4714         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
4715 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
4716 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
4717 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
4718 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
4719 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
4720 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
4721 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
4722 not a durable solution.
4723
4724 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
4725 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
4726
4727 <ul>
4728
4729 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
4730   than A4).</li>
4731 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
4732 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
4733 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
4734 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
4735 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
4736 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
4737 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
4738 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
4739 size).</li>
4740 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
4741   X.org packages.</li>
4742 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
4743   the time).
4744
4745 </ul>
4746
4747 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
4748 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
4749 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
4750 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
4751 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
4752 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
4753 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
4754 still be useful.</p>
4755
4756 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
4757 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
4758 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
4759 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
4760 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
4761 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
4762
4763       </div>
4764       <div class="tags">
4765
4766
4767         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4768
4769
4770       </div>
4771     </div>
4772     <div class="padding"></div>
4773
4774     <div class="entry">
4775       <div class="title">
4776         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
4777       </div>
4778       <div class="date">
4779         18th January 2013
4780       </div>
4781       <div class="body">
4782         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
4783 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
4784 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
4785 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
4786 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
4787 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
4788 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
4789
4790 <pre>
4791 #!/usr/bin/python
4792 import sys
4793 import apt
4794 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4795     cache = apt.Cache()
4796     cache.open(None)
4797     thepkgs = []
4798     for pkg in cache:
4799         version = pkg.candidate
4800         if version is None:
4801             version = pkg.installed
4802         if version is None:
4803             continue
4804         record = version.record
4805         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
4806             continue
4807         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
4808         for t in mime_types:
4809             t = t.rstrip().strip()
4810             if t == mimetype:
4811                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
4812     return thepkgs
4813 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
4814 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
4815     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
4816 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
4817 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4818     print "  %s" %pkg
4819 </pre>
4820
4821 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
4822
4823 <pre>
4824 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
4825 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
4826   gecko-mediaplayer
4827 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
4828 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
4829   browser-plugin-gnash
4830 %
4831 </pre>
4832
4833 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
4834 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
4835 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
4836 anyone working on adding it?</p>
4837
4838 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
4839 request for icweasel support for this feature is
4840 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
4841 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
4842 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
4843 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
4844
4845       </div>
4846       <div class="tags">
4847
4848
4849         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4850
4851
4852       </div>
4853     </div>
4854     <div class="padding"></div>
4855
4856     <div class="entry">
4857       <div class="title">
4858         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
4859       </div>
4860       <div class="date">
4861         16th January 2013
4862       </div>
4863       <div class="body">
4864         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
4865 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
4866 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
4867 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
4868 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
4869 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
4870 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
4871 downloaded by the browser.</p>
4872
4873 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
4874 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
4875 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
4876 can be found on the
4877 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
4878 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
4879 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
4880 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
4881 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
4882
4883 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
4884
4885 <pre>
4886   count MIME type
4887   ----- -----------------------
4888      32 text/plain
4889      30 audio/mpeg
4890      29 image/png
4891      28 image/jpeg
4892      27 application/ogg
4893      26 audio/x-mp3
4894      25 image/tiff
4895      25 image/gif
4896      22 image/bmp
4897      22 audio/x-wav
4898      20 audio/x-flac
4899      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4900      18 video/x-ms-asf
4901      18 audio/x-musepack
4902      18 audio/x-mpeg
4903      18 application/x-ogg
4904      17 video/mpeg
4905      17 audio/x-scpls
4906      17 audio/ogg
4907      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4908 </pre>
4909
4910 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
4911
4912 <pre>
4913   count MIME type
4914   ----- -----------------------
4915      33 text/plain
4916      32 image/png
4917      32 image/jpeg
4918      29 audio/mpeg
4919      27 image/gif
4920      26 image/tiff
4921      26 application/ogg
4922      25 audio/x-mp3
4923      22 image/bmp
4924      21 audio/x-wav
4925      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4926      19 audio/x-mpeg
4927      18 video/mpeg
4928      18 audio/x-scpls
4929      18 audio/x-flac
4930      18 application/x-ogg
4931      17 video/x-ms-asf
4932      17 text/html
4933      17 audio/x-musepack
4934      16 image/x-xbitmap
4935 </pre>
4936
4937 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
4938
4939 <pre>
4940   count MIME type
4941   ----- -----------------------
4942      31 text/plain
4943      31 image/png
4944      31 image/jpeg
4945      29 audio/mpeg
4946      28 application/ogg
4947      27 image/gif
4948      26 image/tiff
4949      26 audio/x-mp3
4950      23 audio/x-wav
4951      22 image/bmp
4952      21 audio/x-flac
4953      20 audio/x-mpegurl
4954      19 audio/x-mpeg
4955      18 video/x-ms-asf
4956      18 video/mpeg
4957      18 audio/x-scpls
4958      18 application/x-ogg
4959      17 audio/x-musepack
4960      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4961      16 video/x-msvideo
4962 </pre>
4963
4964 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
4965 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
4966 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
4967 issues.</p>
4968
4969 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
4970 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
4971
4972       </div>
4973       <div class="tags">
4974
4975
4976         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4977
4978
4979       </div>
4980     </div>
4981     <div class="padding"></div>
4982
4983     <div class="entry">
4984       <div class="title">
4985         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
4986       </div>
4987       <div class="date">
4988         15th January 2013
4989       </div>
4990       <div class="body">
4991         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
4992 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
4993 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
4994 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
4995 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
4996 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
4997 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
4998 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
4999 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
5000 packages.</p>
5001
5002 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
5003 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
5004 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
5005 modalias.</p>
5006
5007 <p><blockquote>
5008 Package: package-name
5009 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
5010 </blockquote></p>
5011
5012 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
5013 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
5014
5015 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
5016 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
5017
5018 <p><blockquote>
5019 Package: cheese
5020 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
5021 </blockquote></p>
5022
5023 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
5024 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
5025
5026 <p><blockquote>
5027 Package: pcmciautils
5028 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
5029 </blockquote></p>
5030
5031 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
5032 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
5033
5034 <p><blockquote>
5035 Package: colorhug-client
5036 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
5037 </blockquote></p>
5038
5039 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
5040 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
5041 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
5042
5043 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
5044 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
5045 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
5046 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
5047 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
5048 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
5049 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
5050 Raring.</p>
5051
5052 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
5053 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
5054 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
5055 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
5056 try the
5057 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
5058 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
5059 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
5060 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
5061
5062 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
5063 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
5064
5065 <p><blockquote>
5066 % ./hw-support-lookup
5067 <br>yubikey-personalization
5068 <br>%
5069 </blockquote></p>
5070
5071 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
5072 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
5073
5074 <p><blockquote>
5075 % ./hw-support-lookup
5076 <br>pcmciautils
5077 <br>%
5078 </blockquote></p>
5079
5080 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
5081 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
5082 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
5083
5084 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
5085 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
5086 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
5087 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
5088 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
5089 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
5090 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
5091 see if it work.</p>
5092
5093 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5094 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5095 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5096 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5097
5098       </div>
5099       <div class="tags">
5100
5101
5102         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5103
5104
5105       </div>
5106     </div>
5107     <div class="padding"></div>
5108
5109     <div class="entry">
5110       <div class="title">
5111         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
5112       </div>
5113       <div class="date">
5114         14th January 2013
5115       </div>
5116       <div class="body">
5117         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
5118 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
5119 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
5120 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
5121 in
5122 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5123 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
5124
5125 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
5126
5127 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
5128 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
5129 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
5130 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
5131 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
5132 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
5133
5134 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
5135 this shell script:</p>
5136
5137 <pre>
5138 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
5139 </pre>
5140
5141 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
5142 using modinfo:</p>
5143
5144 <pre>
5145 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
5146 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
5147 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
5148 %
5149 </pre>
5150
5151 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
5152
5153 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
5154 Bridge memory controller:</p>
5155
5156 <p><blockquote>
5157 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
5158 </blockquote></p>
5159
5160 <p>This represent these values:</p>
5161
5162 <pre>
5163  v   00008086  (vendor)
5164  d   00002770  (device)
5165  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
5166  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
5167  bc  06        (bus class)
5168  sc  00        (bus subclass)
5169  i   00        (interface)
5170 </pre>
5171
5172 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
5173 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
5174 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
5175 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
5176
5177 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
5178 means.</p>
5179
5180 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
5181
5182 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
5183 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
5184
5185 <p><blockquote>
5186 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
5187 </blockquote></p>
5188
5189 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
5190
5191 <pre>
5192  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
5193  p    0001  (device product)
5194  d    0206  (bcddevice)
5195  dc     09  (device class)
5196  dsc    00  (device subclass)
5197  dp     00  (device protocol)
5198  ic     09  (interface class)
5199  isc    00  (interface subclass)
5200  ip     00  (interface protocol)
5201 </pre>
5202
5203 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
5204 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
5205 these alias entries show up:</p>
5206
5207 <p><blockquote>
5208 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
5209 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
5210 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
5211 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
5212 </blockquote></p>
5213
5214 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
5215 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
5216 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
5217
5218 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
5219
5220 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
5221 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
5222
5223 <p><blockquote>
5224 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5225 </blockquote></p>
5226
5227 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
5228
5229 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
5230
5231 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
5232 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
5233 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
5234
5235 <p><blockquote>
5236 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
5237 </blockquote></p>
5238
5239 <p>The values present are</p>
5240
5241 <pre>
5242  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
5243  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
5244  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
5245  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
5246  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
5247  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
5248  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
5249  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
5250  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
5251  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
5252  ct   10             (chassis type)
5253  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
5254 </pre>
5255
5256 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
5257 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
5258
5259 <pre>
5260   3 Desktop
5261   4 Low Profile Desktop
5262   5 Pizza Box
5263   6 Mini Tower
5264   7 Tower
5265   8 Portable
5266   9 Laptop
5267  10 Notebook
5268  11 Hand Held
5269  12 Docking Station
5270  13 All In One
5271  14 Sub Notebook
5272  15 Space-saving
5273  16 Lunch Box
5274  17 Main Server Chassis
5275  18 Expansion Chassis
5276  19 Sub Chassis
5277  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
5278  21 Peripheral Chassis
5279  22 RAID Chassis
5280  23 Rack Mount Chassis
5281  24 Sealed-case PC
5282  25 Multi-system
5283  26 CompactPCI
5284  27 AdvancedTCA
5285  28 Blade
5286  29 Blade Enclosing
5287 </pre>
5288
5289 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
5290 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
5291 claim it is a desktop.</p>
5292
5293 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
5294
5295 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
5296 test machine:</p>
5297
5298 <p><blockquote>
5299 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
5300 </blockquote></p>
5301
5302 <p>The values present are</p>
5303
5304 <pre>
5305   ty  01  (type)
5306   pr  00  (prototype)
5307   id  00  (id)
5308   ex  00  (extra)
5309 </pre>
5310
5311 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
5312 the valid values are.</p>
5313
5314 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
5315
5316 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
5317 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
5318 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
5319 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
5320 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
5321 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
5322 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
5323
5324 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
5325
5326 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
5327 one can use the following shell script:</p>
5328
5329 <pre>
5330   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
5331     echo "$id" ; \
5332     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
5333   done
5334 </pre>
5335
5336 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
5337 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
5338
5339 <pre>
5340   acpi:ACPI0003:
5341     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
5342   acpi:device:
5343   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
5344   acpi:IBM0068:
5345     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
5346     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
5347     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
5348     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
5349   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5350     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
5351     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
5352     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
5353   [...]
5354 </pre>
5355
5356 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5357 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5358 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5359 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5360
5361 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
5362 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
5363 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
5364
5365       </div>
5366       <div class="tags">
5367
5368
5369         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5370
5371
5372       </div>
5373     </div>
5374     <div class="padding"></div>
5375
5376     <div class="entry">
5377       <div class="title">
5378         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
5379       </div>
5380       <div class="date">
5381         10th January 2013
5382       </div>
5383       <div class="body">
5384         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
5385 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
5386 Launcher and updated the Debian package
5387 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
5388 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
5389 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
5390 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
5391 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
5392 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
5393 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
5394 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
5395 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
5396 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
5397 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
5398 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
5399 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
5400 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
5401 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
5402
5403       </div>
5404       <div class="tags">
5405
5406
5407         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
5408
5409
5410       </div>
5411     </div>
5412     <div class="padding"></div>
5413
5414     <div class="entry">
5415       <div class="title">
5416         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">Lets make hardware dongles easier to use in Debian</a>
5417       </div>
5418       <div class="date">
5419          9th January 2013
5420       </div>
5421       <div class="body">
5422         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
5423 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
5424 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
5425 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
5426 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
5427 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
5428 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
5429 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
5430 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
5431 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
5432 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
5433
5434 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
5435 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
5436 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
5437 simple:
5438
5439 <ul>
5440
5441 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
5442   starting when a user log in.</li>
5443
5444 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
5445   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
5446
5447 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
5448   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
5449   packages.</li>
5450
5451 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
5452   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
5453
5454 </ul>
5455
5456 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
5457 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
5458 discover database to find packages and
5459 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
5460 packages.</p>
5461
5462 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
5463 draft package is now checked into
5464 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5465 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
5466 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
5467 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
5468 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
5469 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
5470 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
5471 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
5472 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
5473 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
5474 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
5475 because of the freeze).</p>
5476
5477 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
5478 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
5479 inserted):</p>
5480
5481 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
5482
5483 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
5484 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
5485 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
5486
5487 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
5488 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
5489 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
5490 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
5491 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
5492 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
5493 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
5494
5495 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
5496 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
5497 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
5498 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
5499 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
5500 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
5501 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
5502 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
5503 not be installed?</p>
5504
5505 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
5506 please send me an email. :)</p>
5507
5508       </div>
5509       <div class="tags">
5510
5511
5512         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5513
5514
5515       </div>
5516     </div>
5517     <div class="padding"></div>
5518
5519     <div class="entry">
5520       <div class="title">
5521         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
5522       </div>
5523       <div class="date">
5524          2nd January 2013
5525       </div>
5526       <div class="body">
5527         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
5528 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
5529 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
5530 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
5531 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
5532 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
5533 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
5534 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
5535 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
5536 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
5537
5538 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
5539 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
5540 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
5541
5542       </div>
5543       <div class="tags">
5544
5545
5546         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
5547
5548
5549       </div>
5550     </div>
5551     <div class="padding"></div>
5552
5553     <div class="entry">
5554       <div class="title">
5555         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">How to backport bitcoin-qt version 0.7.2-2 to Debian Squeeze</a>
5556       </div>
5557       <div class="date">
5558         25th December 2012
5559       </div>
5560       <div class="body">
5561         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
5562 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
5563
5564 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
5565 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
5566 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
5567 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
5568 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
5569 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
5570 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
5571 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
5572 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
5573 name.</p>
5574
5575 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
5576 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
5577 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
5578
5579 <blockquote><pre>
5580 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
5581 cd bitcoin
5582 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
5583 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
5584 </pre></blockquote>
5585
5586 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
5587 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
5588 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
5589 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
5590 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
5591 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
5592 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
5593 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
5594 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
5595
5596 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5597 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5598 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5599
5600       </div>
5601       <div class="tags">
5602
5603
5604         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5605
5606
5607       </div>
5608     </div>
5609     <div class="padding"></div>
5610
5611     <div class="entry">
5612       <div class="title">
5613         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
5614       </div>
5615       <div class="date">
5616         21st December 2012
5617       </div>
5618       <div class="body">
5619         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
5620 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
5621 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
5622 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
5623 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
5624 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
5625 is now maintained by a
5626 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
5627 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
5628 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
5629 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
5630 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
5631 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
5632 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
5633 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
5634 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
5635 Corallo in a
5636 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
5637 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
5638 Debian package.</p>
5639
5640 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
5641 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
5642 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
5643 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
5644 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
5645 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
5646 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
5647 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
5648 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
5649 new version to unstable.
5650
5651 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
5652 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
5653 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
5654 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
5655 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
5656 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
5657 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
5658 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
5659 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
5660 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
5661 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
5662 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
5663 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
5664 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
5665 have not tested them.</p>
5666
5667 <p>My
5668 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
5669 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
5670 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
5671 years ago, as can be
5672 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
5673 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
5674 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
5675 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
5676 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
5677 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
5678 the same address as last time,
5679 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5680
5681       </div>
5682       <div class="tags">
5683
5684
5685         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5686
5687
5688       </div>
5689     </div>
5690     <div class="padding"></div>
5691
5692     <div class="entry">
5693       <div class="title">
5694         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Git_repository_for_song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Git repository for song book for Computer Scientists</a>
5695       </div>
5696       <div class="date">
5697          7th September 2012
5698       </div>
5699       <div class="body">
5700         <p>As I
5701 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
5702 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
5703 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
5704 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
5705 repository for the project</a>.</p>
5706
5707 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
5708 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
5709 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
5710 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
5711
5712 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
5713 PostScript formats at
5714 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
5715 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
5716
5717       </div>
5718       <div class="tags">
5719
5720
5721         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
5722
5723
5724       </div>
5725     </div>
5726     <div class="padding"></div>
5727
5728     <div class="entry">
5729       <div class="title">
5730         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
5731       </div>
5732       <div class="date">
5733         16th August 2012
5734       </div>
5735       <div class="body">
5736         <p>I dag fyller
5737 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
5738 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
5739 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
5740
5741       </div>
5742       <div class="tags">
5743
5744
5745         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
5746
5747
5748       </div>
5749     </div>
5750     <div class="padding"></div>
5751
5752     <div class="entry">
5753       <div class="title">
5754         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
5755       </div>
5756       <div class="date">
5757         24th June 2012
5758       </div>
5759       <div class="body">
5760         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
5761 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
5762 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
5763 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
5764 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
5765 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
5766 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
5767 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
5768 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
5769 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
5770 missing in my book.</p>
5771
5772 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
5773 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
5774 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
5775 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
5776 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
5777 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
5778 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
5779
5780       </div>
5781       <div class="tags">
5782
5783
5784         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
5785
5786
5787       </div>
5788     </div>
5789     <div class="padding"></div>
5790
5791     <div class="entry">
5792       <div class="title">
5793         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
5794       </div>
5795       <div class="date">
5796         21st November 2011
5797       </div>
5798       <div class="body">
5799         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
5800 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
5801 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
5802 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
5803 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
5804 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
5805 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
5806 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
5807 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
5808 the tools to do so.</p>
5809
5810 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
5811 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
5812 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
5813 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
5814
5815 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
5816 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
5817 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
5818 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
5819 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
5820 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
5821 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
5822 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
5823
5824 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
5825 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
5826 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
5827
5828 <p><pre>
5829 #!/usr/bin/perl
5830 use strict;
5831 use warnings;
5832 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
5833 BEGIN {
5834     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
5835     my %rhelmodules = (
5836         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
5837         );
5838     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
5839         eval "use $module;";
5840         if ($@) {
5841             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
5842             system("yum install -y $pkg");
5843             eval "use $module;";
5844         }
5845     }
5846 }
5847 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
5848
5849 upgrade_dell();
5850
5851 exit 0;
5852
5853 sub run_firmware_script {
5854     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
5855     unless ($script) {
5856         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
5857         exit 1
5858     }
5859     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
5860
5861     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
5862         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
5863     } else {
5864         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
5865     }
5866 }
5867
5868 sub run_firmware_scripts {
5869     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
5870     # Run firmware packages
5871     for my $dir (@dirs) {
5872         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
5873         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
5874         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
5875             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
5876             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
5877         }
5878         closedir $dh;
5879     }
5880 }
5881
5882 sub download {
5883     my $url = shift;
5884     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
5885     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
5886 }
5887
5888 sub upgrade_dell {
5889     my @dirs;
5890     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5891     chomp $product;
5892
5893     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
5894
5895         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
5896         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
5897
5898         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
5899             CLEANUP => 1
5900             );
5901         chdir($tmpdir);
5902         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
5903         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
5904         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
5905         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
5906         my $fwopts = "-q";
5907         if (@paths) {
5908             for my $url (@paths) {
5909                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
5910             }
5911             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
5912         } else {
5913             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5914             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5915         }
5916         chdir('/');
5917     } else {
5918         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5919         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5920     }
5921 }
5922
5923 sub fetch_dell_fw {
5924     my $path = shift;
5925     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
5926     download($url);
5927 }
5928
5929 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
5930 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
5931 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
5932 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
5933     my $filename = shift;
5934
5935     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5936     chomp $product;
5937     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
5938
5939     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
5940
5941     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
5942     my @paths;
5943     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
5944         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
5945         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
5946         my $oscode;
5947         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
5948             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
5949         } else {
5950             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
5951         }
5952         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
5953         {
5954             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
5955         }
5956     }
5957     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
5958         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
5959
5960         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
5961         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
5962
5963         my $cpath = $component->{path};
5964         for my $path (@paths) {
5965             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
5966                 push(@paths, $cpath);
5967             }
5968         }
5969     }
5970     return @paths;
5971 }
5972 </pre>
5973
5974 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
5975 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
5976 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
5977 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
5978 outdated.</p>
5979
5980       </div>
5981       <div class="tags">
5982
5983
5984         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5985
5986
5987       </div>
5988     </div>
5989     <div class="padding"></div>
5990
5991     <div class="entry">
5992       <div class="title">
5993         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
5994       </div>
5995       <div class="date">
5996          4th August 2011
5997       </div>
5998       <div class="body">
5999         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
6000 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
6001 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
6002 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
6003 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
6004 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
6005 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
6006 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
6007 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
6008
6009 <p><blockquote>
6010 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
6011 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
6012 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
6013 </blockquote></p>
6014
6015 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
6016 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
6017 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
6018 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
6019 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
6020 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
6021 hard to explain.</p>
6022
6023 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
6024 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
6025 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
6026 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
6027 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
6028 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
6029 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
6030 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
6031 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
6032 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
6033 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
6034 mode).</p>
6035
6036 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
6037 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
6038 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
6039 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
6040 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
6041 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
6042 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
6043 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
6044 after visiting single user mode.</p>
6045
6046 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
6047 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
6048 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
6049 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
6050 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
6051 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
6052 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
6053 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
6054
6055 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
6056 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
6057 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
6058
6059       </div>
6060       <div class="tags">
6061
6062
6063         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6064
6065
6066       </div>
6067     </div>
6068     <div class="padding"></div>
6069
6070     <div class="entry">
6071       <div class="title">
6072         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">What should start from /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian? - almost nothing</a>
6073       </div>
6074       <div class="date">
6075         30th July 2011
6076       </div>
6077       <div class="body">
6078         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
6079 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
6080 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
6081 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
6082 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
6083 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
6084 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
6085 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
6086 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
6087 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
6088 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
6089 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
6090 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
6091
6092 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
6093 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
6094 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
6095 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
6096 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
6097 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
6098 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
6099 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
6100 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
6101
6102 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
6103 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
6104 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
6105 is presented.</p>
6106
6107 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
6108 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
6109 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
6110 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
6111 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
6112 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
6113 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
6114 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
6115 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
6116 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
6117 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
6118 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
6119 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
6120 find time to push this forward.</p>
6121
6122       </div>
6123       <div class="tags">
6124
6125
6126         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6127
6128
6129       </div>
6130     </div>
6131     <div class="padding"></div>
6132
6133     <div class="entry">
6134       <div class="title">
6135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a>
6136       </div>
6137       <div class="date">
6138         29th July 2011
6139       </div>
6140       <div class="body">
6141         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
6142 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
6143 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
6144 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
6145 issues.</p>
6146
6147 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
6148 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
6149 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
6150
6151 <ol>
6152
6153 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
6154 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
6155 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
6156 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
6157 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
6158 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
6159 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
6160 Debian.</li>
6161
6162 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
6163 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
6164 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
6165 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
6166 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
6167 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
6168 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
6169 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
6170 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
6171 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
6172 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
6173 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
6174 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
6175
6176 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
6177 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
6178 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
6179 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
6180 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
6181 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
6182 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
6183 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
6184 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
6185 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
6186
6187 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
6188 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
6189 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
6190 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
6191 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
6192 latter behaviour.</li>
6193
6194 </ol>
6195
6196 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
6197 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
6198 it do not matter much.</p>
6199
6200 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
6201 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
6202 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
6203
6204       </div>
6205       <div class="tags">
6206
6207
6208         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6209
6210
6211       </div>
6212     </div>
6213     <div class="padding"></div>
6214
6215     <div class="entry">
6216       <div class="title">
6217         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_modules_used_by_FixMyStreet_which_are_missing_in_Debian_Squeeze.html">Perl modules used by FixMyStreet which are missing in Debian/Squeeze</a>
6218       </div>
6219       <div class="date">
6220         26th July 2011
6221       </div>
6222       <div class="body">
6223         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
6224 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
6225 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
6226 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
6227 security support for a few years.</p>
6228
6229 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
6230 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
6231 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
6232 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
6233 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
6234 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
6235 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
6236 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
6237 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
6238 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
6239 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
6240 easier in the future.</p>
6241
6242 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
6243 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
6244 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
6245 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
6246 do not have time for.</p>
6247
6248       </div>
6249       <div class="tags">
6250
6251
6252         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
6253
6254
6255       </div>
6256     </div>
6257     <div class="padding"></div>
6258
6259     <div class="entry">
6260       <div class="title">
6261         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
6262       </div>
6263       <div class="date">
6264          3rd April 2011
6265       </div>
6266       <div class="body">
6267         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
6268 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
6269 update in English.</p>
6270
6271 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
6272 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
6273 of the British service
6274 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
6275 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
6276 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
6277 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
6278 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
6279 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
6280 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
6281 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
6282 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
6283 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
6284 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
6285 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
6286 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
6287
6288 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
6289 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
6290 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
6291 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
6292 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
6293 public infrastructure.</p>
6294
6295 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
6296 such service?</p>
6297
6298       </div>
6299       <div class="tags">
6300
6301
6302         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
6303
6304
6305       </div>
6306     </div>
6307     <div class="padding"></div>
6308
6309     <div class="entry">
6310       <div class="title">
6311         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
6312       </div>
6313       <div class="date">
6314         28th January 2011
6315       </div>
6316       <div class="body">
6317         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
6318 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
6319 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
6320 available on the Internet, and check our locally
6321 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
6322 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
6323 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
6324 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
6325 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
6326 out which security holes were present in our free software
6327 collection.</p>
6328
6329 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
6330 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
6331 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
6332 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
6333 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
6334 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
6335 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
6336 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
6337 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
6338 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
6339 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
6340 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
6341 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
6342 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
6343 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
6344 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
6345
6346 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
6347 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
6348 check out, one could look up
6349 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search?cpe=cpe%3A%2Fa%3Agnu%3Agzip:1.3.3">cpe:/a:gnu:gzip:1.3.3
6350 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
6351 The most recent one is
6352 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
6353 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
6354 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
6355
6356 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
6357 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
6358 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
6359 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
6360 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
6361 security issues out.</p>
6362
6363 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
6364 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
6365 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
6366 RHEL is providing
6367 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
6368 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
6369 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
6370
6371 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
6372 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
6373 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
6374 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
6375 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
6376 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
6377 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
6378 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
6379 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
6380 established soon.</p>
6381
6382 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
6383 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
6384 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
6385 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
6386 for their packages.</p>
6387
6388       </div>
6389       <div class="tags">
6390
6391
6392         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6393
6394
6395       </div>
6396     </div>
6397     <div class="padding"></div>
6398
6399     <div class="entry">
6400       <div class="title">
6401         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Which_module_is_loaded_for_a_given_PCI_and_USB_device_.html">Which module is loaded for a given PCI and USB device?</a>
6402       </div>
6403       <div class="date">
6404         23rd January 2011
6405       </div>
6406       <div class="body">
6407         <p>In the
6408 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
6409 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6410 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6411 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
6412 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6413 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6414 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
6415 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6416 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
6417 one of my machines like this:</p>
6418
6419 <pre>
6420 loaded modules:
6421 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6422 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
6423 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
6424 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6425 10de:03ec pata_amd
6426 10de:03f6 sata_nv
6427 1022:1103 k8temp
6428 109e:036e bttv
6429 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
6430 11ab:4364 sky2
6431 </pre>
6432
6433 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6434 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
6435
6436 <pre>
6437 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6438     echo loaded pci modules:
6439     (
6440         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6441         for address in * ; do
6442             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6443                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6444                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6445                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6446                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
6447                     echo "$id $module"
6448                 fi
6449             fi
6450         done
6451     )
6452     echo
6453 fi
6454 </pre>
6455
6456 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6457 mappings:</p>
6458
6459 <pre>
6460 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6461     echo loaded usb modules:
6462     (
6463         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6464         for address in * ; do
6465             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6466                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6467                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6468                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6469                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
6470                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
6471                         echo "$id $module"
6472                     fi
6473                 fi
6474             fi
6475         done
6476     )
6477     echo
6478 fi
6479 </pre>
6480
6481 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6482 well.</p>
6483
6484       </div>
6485       <div class="tags">
6486
6487
6488         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6489
6490
6491       </div>
6492     </div>
6493     <div class="padding"></div>
6494
6495     <div class="entry">
6496       <div class="title">
6497         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
6498       </div>
6499       <div class="date">
6500         22nd December 2010
6501       </div>
6502       <div class="body">
6503         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
6504 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
6505 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
6506 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
6507 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
6508 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
6509 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
6510 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
6511 university.</p>
6512
6513 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
6514 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
6515 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
6516 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
6517 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
6518 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
6519 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
6520 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
6521
6522 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
6523 I perform on a new model.</p>
6524
6525 <ul>
6526
6527 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
6528 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
6529 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
6530
6531 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
6532 installation, X.org is working.</li>
6533
6534 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
6535 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
6536 reported by the program.</li>
6537
6538 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
6539 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
6540 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
6541 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
6542 normally test this by playing
6543 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
6544 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
6545
6546 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
6547 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6548
6549 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
6550 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6551
6552 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
6553 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
6554
6555 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
6556 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
6557 few.</li>
6558
6559 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
6560 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
6561 notice this.</li>
6562
6563 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
6564 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
6565 resume.</li>
6566
6567 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
6568 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
6569 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
6570 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
6571 not.</li>
6572
6573 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
6574 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
6575 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
6576 existence.</li>
6577
6578 </ul>
6579
6580 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
6581 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
6582 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
6583 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
6584 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
6585 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
6586 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
6587 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
6588
6589       </div>
6590       <div class="tags">
6591
6592
6593         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6594
6595
6596       </div>
6597     </div>
6598     <div class="padding"></div>
6599
6600     <div class="entry">
6601       <div class="title">
6602         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
6603       </div>
6604       <div class="date">
6605         11th December 2010
6606       </div>
6607       <div class="body">
6608         <p>As I continue to explore
6609 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
6610 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
6611 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
6612
6613 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
6614 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
6615 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
6616 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
6617 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
6618 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
6619 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
6620 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
6621 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
6622 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
6623 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
6624 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
6625 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
6626 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
6627 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
6628 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
6629 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
6630 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
6631 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
6632 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
6633
6634 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
6635 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
6636 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
6637 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
6638 If the Skolelinux foundation
6639 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
6640 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
6641 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
6642 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
6643 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
6644 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
6645 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
6646 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
6647
6648 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
6649 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
6650 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
6651 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
6652 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
6653 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
6654 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
6655 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
6656 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
6657 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
6658 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
6659 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
6660 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
6661 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
6662 currencies.</p>
6663
6664 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
6665 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
6666 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
6667 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
6668 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
6669 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
6670 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
6671 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
6672 BitCoins.  Check out
6673 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
6674 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
6675 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
6676 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
6677 yet.</p>
6678
6679 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
6680 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
6681 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
6682 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
6683 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
6684
6685       </div>
6686       <div class="tags">
6687
6688
6689         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6690
6691
6692       </div>
6693     </div>
6694     <div class="padding"></div>
6695
6696     <div class="entry">
6697       <div class="title">
6698         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</a>
6699       </div>
6700       <div class="date">
6701         10th December 2010
6702       </div>
6703       <div class="body">
6704         <p>With this weeks lawless
6705 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
6706 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
6707 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
6708 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
6709 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
6710 A blog post from
6711 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
6712 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
6713 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
6714 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
6715 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
6716 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
6717 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
6718
6719 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
6720 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
6721 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
6722 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
6723 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
6724 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
6725 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
6726 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
6727 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
6728 Debian</a> soon.</p>
6729
6730 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
6731 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
6732 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
6733 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
6734 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
6735 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
6736 you can even get
6737 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
6738 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
6739 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
6740 on the current exchange rates.</p>
6741
6742 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
6743 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
6744 donations to the address
6745 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
6746
6747       </div>
6748       <div class="tags">
6749
6750
6751         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
6752
6753
6754       </div>
6755     </div>
6756     <div class="padding"></div>
6757
6758     <div class="entry">
6759       <div class="title">
6760         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
6761       </div>
6762       <div class="date">
6763         27th November 2010
6764       </div>
6765       <div class="body">
6766         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
6767 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
6768 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
6769 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
6770 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
6771 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
6772 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
6773 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
6774
6775 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
6776 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6777 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
6778 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
6779 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
6780 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
6781 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
6782 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
6783 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
6784 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
6785 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
6786
6787 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
6788 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
6789 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
6790 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
6791 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
6792 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
6793 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
6794 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
6795 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
6796 what is going on.</p>
6797
6798       </div>
6799       <div class="tags">
6800
6801
6802         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6803
6804
6805       </div>
6806     </div>
6807     <div class="padding"></div>
6808
6809     <div class="entry">
6810       <div class="title">
6811         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades_of_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop__now_with_apt_get_autoremove.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades of the Gnome and KDE desktop, now with apt-get autoremove</a>
6812       </div>
6813       <div class="date">
6814         22nd November 2010
6815       </div>
6816       <div class="body">
6817         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
6818 upgrade testing of the
6819 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6820 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
6821 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
6822 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
6823
6824 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6825
6826 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6827
6828 <blockquote><p>
6829   apache2.2-bin
6830   aptdaemon
6831   baobab
6832   binfmt-support
6833   browser-plugin-gnash
6834   cheese-common
6835   cli-common
6836   cups-pk-helper
6837   dmz-cursor-theme
6838   empathy
6839   empathy-common
6840   freedesktop-sound-theme
6841   freeglut3
6842   gconf-defaults-service
6843   gdm-themes
6844   gedit-plugins
6845   geoclue
6846   geoclue-hostip
6847   geoclue-localnet
6848   geoclue-manual
6849   geoclue-yahoo
6850   gnash
6851   gnash-common
6852   gnome
6853   gnome-backgrounds
6854   gnome-cards-data
6855   gnome-codec-install
6856   gnome-core
6857   gnome-desktop-environment
6858   gnome-disk-utility
6859   gnome-screenshot
6860   gnome-search-tool
6861   gnome-session-canberra
6862   gnome-system-log
6863   gnome-themes-extras
6864   gnome-themes-more
6865   gnome-user-share
6866   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6867   gstreamer0.10-tools
6868   gtk2-engines
6869   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6870   gtk2-engines-smooth
6871   hamster-applet
6872   libapache2-mod-dnssd
6873   libapr1
6874   libaprutil1
6875   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
6876   libaprutil1-ldap
6877   libart2.0-cil
6878   libboost-date-time1.42.0
6879   libboost-python1.42.0
6880   libboost-thread1.42.0
6881   libchamplain-0.4-0
6882   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
6883   libcheese-gtk18
6884   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6885   libcryptui0
6886   libdiscid0
6887   libelf1
6888   libepc-1.0-2
6889   libepc-common
6890   libepc-ui-1.0-2
6891   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6892   libfreerdp0
6893   libgconf2.0-cil
6894   libgdata-common
6895   libgdata7
6896   libgdu-gtk0
6897   libgee2
6898   libgeoclue0
6899   libgexiv2-0
6900   libgif4
6901   libglade2.0-cil
6902   libglib2.0-cil
6903   libgmime2.4-cil
6904   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6905   libgnome2.24-cil
6906   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
6907   libgpod-common
6908   libgpod4
6909   libgtk2.0-cil
6910   libgtkglext1
6911   libgtksourceview2.0-common
6912   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6913   libmono-addins0.2-cil
6914   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
6915   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6916   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
6917   libmono-posix2.0-cil
6918   libmono-security2.0-cil
6919   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6920   libmono-system2.0-cil
6921   libmtp8
6922   libmusicbrainz3-6
6923   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
6924   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
6925   libopal3.6.8
6926   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
6927   libpt2.6.7
6928   libpython2.6
6929   librpm1
6930   librpmio1
6931   libsdl1.2debian
6932   libsrtp0
6933   libssh-4
6934   libtelepathy-farsight0
6935   libtelepathy-glib0
6936   libtidy-0.99-0
6937   media-player-info
6938   mesa-utils
6939   mono-2.0-gac
6940   mono-gac
6941   mono-runtime
6942   nautilus-sendto
6943   nautilus-sendto-empathy
6944   p7zip-full
6945   pkg-config
6946   python-aptdaemon
6947   python-aptdaemon-gtk
6948   python-axiom
6949   python-beautifulsoup
6950   python-bugbuddy
6951   python-clientform
6952   python-coherence
6953   python-configobj
6954   python-crypto
6955   python-cupshelpers
6956   python-elementtree
6957   python-epsilon
6958   python-evolution
6959   python-feedparser
6960   python-gdata
6961   python-gdbm
6962   python-gst0.10
6963   python-gtkglext1
6964   python-gtksourceview2
6965   python-httplib2
6966   python-louie
6967   python-mako
6968   python-markupsafe
6969   python-mechanize
6970   python-nevow
6971   python-notify
6972   python-opengl
6973   python-openssl
6974   python-pam
6975   python-pkg-resources
6976   python-pyasn1
6977   python-pysqlite2
6978   python-rdflib
6979   python-serial
6980   python-tagpy
6981   python-twisted-bin
6982   python-twisted-conch
6983   python-twisted-core
6984   python-twisted-web
6985   python-utidylib
6986   python-webkit
6987   python-xdg
6988   python-zope.interface
6989   remmina
6990   remmina-plugin-data
6991   remmina-plugin-rdp
6992   remmina-plugin-vnc
6993   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6994   rhythmbox-plugins
6995   rpm-common
6996   rpm2cpio
6997   seahorse-plugins
6998   shotwell
6999   software-center
7000   system-config-printer-udev
7001   telepathy-gabble
7002   telepathy-mission-control-5
7003   telepathy-salut
7004   tomboy
7005   totem
7006   totem-coherence
7007   totem-mozilla
7008   totem-plugins
7009   transmission-common
7010   xdg-user-dirs
7011   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
7012   xserver-xephyr
7013 </p></blockquote>
7014
7015 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7016
7017 <blockquote><p>
7018   cheese
7019   ekiga
7020   eog
7021   epiphany-extensions
7022   evolution-exchange
7023   fast-user-switch-applet
7024   file-roller
7025   gcalctool
7026   gconf-editor
7027   gdm
7028   gedit
7029   gedit-common
7030   gnome-games
7031   gnome-games-data
7032   gnome-nettool
7033   gnome-system-tools
7034   gnome-themes
7035   gnuchess
7036   gucharmap
7037   guile-1.8-libs
7038   libavahi-ui0
7039   libdmx1
7040   libgalago3
7041   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
7042   libgtksourceview2.0-0
7043   liblircclient0
7044   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
7045   libspeexdsp1
7046   libsvga1
7047   rhythmbox
7048   seahorse
7049   sound-juicer
7050   system-config-printer
7051   totem-common
7052   transmission-gtk
7053   vinagre
7054   vino
7055 </p></blockquote>
7056
7057 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7058
7059 <blockquote><p>
7060   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7061 </p></blockquote>
7062
7063 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7064
7065 <blockquote><p>
7066 [nothing]
7067 </p></blockquote>
7068
7069 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
7070
7071 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7072
7073 <blockquote><p>
7074   ksmserver
7075 </p></blockquote>
7076
7077 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7078
7079 <blockquote><p>
7080   kwin
7081   network-manager-kde
7082 </p></blockquote>
7083
7084 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7085
7086 <blockquote><p>
7087   arts
7088   dolphin
7089   freespacenotifier
7090   google-gadgets-gst
7091   google-gadgets-xul
7092   kappfinder
7093   kcalc
7094   kcharselect
7095   kde-core
7096   kde-plasma-desktop
7097   kde-standard
7098   kde-window-manager
7099   kdeartwork
7100   kdeartwork-emoticons
7101   kdeartwork-style
7102   kdeartwork-theme-icon
7103   kdebase
7104   kdebase-apps
7105   kdebase-workspace
7106   kdebase-workspace-bin
7107   kdebase-workspace-data
7108   kdeeject
7109   kdelibs
7110   kdeplasma-addons
7111   kdeutils
7112   kdewallpapers
7113   kdf
7114   kfloppy
7115   kgpg
7116   khelpcenter4
7117   kinfocenter
7118   konq-plugins-l10n
7119   konqueror-nsplugins
7120   kscreensaver
7121   kscreensaver-xsavers
7122   ktimer
7123   kwrite
7124   libgle3
7125   libkde4-ruby1.8
7126   libkonq5
7127   libkonq5-templates
7128   libnetpbm10
7129   libplasma-ruby
7130   libplasma-ruby1.8
7131   libqt4-ruby1.8
7132   marble-data
7133   marble-plugins
7134   netpbm
7135   nuvola-icon-theme
7136   plasma-dataengines-workspace
7137   plasma-desktop
7138   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
7139   plasma-runners-addons
7140   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
7141   plasma-scriptengine-python
7142   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
7143   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
7144   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
7145   plasma-scriptengines
7146   plasma-wallpapers-addons
7147   plasma-widget-folderview
7148   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7149   ruby
7150   sweeper
7151   update-notifier-kde
7152   xscreensaver-data-extra
7153   xscreensaver-gl
7154   xscreensaver-gl-extra
7155   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7156 </p></blockquote>
7157
7158 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7159
7160 <blockquote><p>
7161   ark
7162   google-gadgets-common
7163   google-gadgets-qt
7164   htdig
7165   kate
7166   kdebase-bin
7167   kdebase-data
7168   kdepasswd
7169   kfind
7170   klipper
7171   konq-plugins
7172   konqueror
7173   ksysguard
7174   ksysguardd
7175   libarchive1
7176   libcln6
7177   libeet1
7178   libeina-svn-06
7179   libggadget-1.0-0b
7180   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
7181   libgps19
7182   libkdecorations4
7183   libkephal4
7184   libkonq4
7185   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
7186   libkscreensaver5
7187   libksgrd4
7188   libksignalplotter4
7189   libkunitconversion4
7190   libkwineffects1a
7191   libmarblewidget4
7192   libntrack-qt4-1
7193   libntrack0
7194   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
7195   libplasmaclock4a
7196   libplasmagenericshell4
7197   libprocesscore4a
7198   libprocessui4a
7199   libqalculate5
7200   libqedje0a
7201   libqtruby4shared2
7202   libqzion0a
7203   libruby1.8
7204   libscim8c2a
7205   libsmokekdecore4-3
7206   libsmokekdeui4-3
7207   libsmokekfile3
7208   libsmokekhtml3
7209   libsmokekio3
7210   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
7211   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
7212   libsmokekparts3
7213   libsmokektexteditor3
7214   libsmokekutils3
7215   libsmokenepomuk3
7216   libsmokephonon3
7217   libsmokeplasma3
7218   libsmokeqtcore4-3
7219   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
7220   libsmokeqtgui4-3
7221   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
7222   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
7223   libsmokeqtscript4-3
7224   libsmokeqtsql4-3
7225   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
7226   libsmokeqttest4-3
7227   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
7228   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
7229   libsmokeqtxml4-3
7230   libsmokesolid3
7231   libsmokesoprano3
7232   libtaskmanager4a
7233   libtidy-0.99-0
7234   libweather-ion4a
7235   libxklavier16
7236   libxxf86misc1
7237   okteta
7238   oxygencursors
7239   plasma-dataengines-addons
7240   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
7241   plasma-widget-lancelot
7242   plasma-widgets-addons
7243   plasma-widgets-workspace
7244   polkit-kde-1
7245   ruby1.8
7246   systemsettings
7247   update-notifier-common
7248 </p></blockquote>
7249
7250 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
7251 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
7252 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
7253 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
7254
7255       </div>
7256       <div class="tags">
7257
7258
7259         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7260
7261
7262       </div>
7263     </div>
7264     <div class="padding"></div>
7265
7266     <div class="entry">
7267       <div class="title">
7268         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Migrating_Xen_virtual_machines_using_LVM_to_KVM_using_disk_images.html">Migrating Xen virtual machines using LVM to KVM using disk images</a>
7269       </div>
7270       <div class="date">
7271         22nd November 2010
7272       </div>
7273       <div class="body">
7274         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
7275 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
7276 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
7277 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
7278 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
7279 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
7280 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
7281 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
7282 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
7283
7284 <p>I found
7285 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
7286 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
7287 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
7288 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
7289 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
7290 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
7291
7292 <pre>
7293 #!/bin/sh
7294
7295 # Based on
7296 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
7297
7298 set -e
7299 set -x
7300
7301 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
7302     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
7303     exit 1
7304 else
7305     host="$1"
7306 fi
7307
7308 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
7309     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
7310     exit 1
7311 fi
7312
7313 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
7314 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
7315 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
7316 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
7317
7318 img=$host.img
7319 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
7320 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
7321
7322 parted $img mklabel msdos
7323 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
7324 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
7325 parted $img set 1 boot on
7326
7327 modprobe dm-mod
7328 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
7329 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
7330
7331 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
7332 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
7333 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
7334
7335 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
7336 losetup -d /dev/loop0
7337 </pre>
7338
7339 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
7340 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
7341
7342 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
7343 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
7344 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
7345 seem to work just fine.</p>
7346
7347       </div>
7348       <div class="tags">
7349
7350
7351         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7352
7353
7354       </div>
7355     </div>
7356     <div class="padding"></div>
7357
7358     <div class="entry">
7359       <div class="title">
7360         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_and_KDE_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome and KDE desktop</a>
7361       </div>
7362       <div class="date">
7363         20th November 2010
7364       </div>
7365       <div class="body">
7366         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
7367 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7368 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
7369 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
7370
7371 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
7372 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
7373 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
7374
7375 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
7376
7377 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7378
7379 <blockquote><p>
7380   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
7381   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
7382   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
7383   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
7384   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
7385   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
7386   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
7387   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
7388   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
7389   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
7390   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7391   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
7392   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
7393   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
7394   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
7395   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
7396   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
7397   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
7398   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7399   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
7400   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
7401   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
7402   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
7403   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
7404   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
7405   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7406   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7407   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
7408   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7409   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
7410   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
7411   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
7412   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
7413   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
7414   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
7415   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
7416   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
7417   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
7418   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
7419   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
7420   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
7421   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
7422   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
7423   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
7424   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
7425   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
7426   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
7427   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
7428   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
7429   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
7430   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
7431   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
7432   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7433   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
7434   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
7435   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
7436   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
7437   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
7438   zip
7439 </p></blockquote>
7440
7441 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
7442
7443 <blockquote><p>
7444   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
7445   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
7446   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
7447   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
7448   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
7449   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
7450   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
7451   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
7452   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
7453   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
7454   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
7455   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
7456   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
7457   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7458   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
7459   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
7460   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7461   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
7462   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
7463   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
7464   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
7465   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
7466   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
7467   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
7468   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
7469   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
7470   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
7471   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
7472   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
7473 </p></blockquote>
7474
7475 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7476
7477 <blockquote><p>
7478   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7479 </p></blockquote>
7480
7481 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7482
7483 <blockquote><p>
7484 [nothing]
7485 </p></blockquote>
7486
7487 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
7488
7489 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7490
7491 <blockquote><p>
7492   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
7493   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
7494   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
7495   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
7496   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
7497   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
7498   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
7499   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
7500   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
7501   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
7502   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
7503   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
7504   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
7505   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
7506   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
7507   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
7508   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
7509   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
7510   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
7511   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
7512   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
7513   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
7514   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
7515   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
7516   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
7517   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
7518   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
7519   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
7520   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
7521   ttf-sazanami-gothic
7522 </p></blockquote>
7523
7524 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7525
7526 <blockquote><p>
7527   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
7528   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
7529   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
7530   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
7531   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
7532   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
7533   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
7534   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
7535   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
7536   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
7537   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
7538   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
7539   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
7540   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
7541   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
7542   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
7543   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
7544   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
7545   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
7546   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
7547   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7548   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
7549   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
7550   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
7551   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
7552   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
7553   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
7554   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
7555   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
7556   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
7557   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
7558   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
7559   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
7560 </p></blockquote>
7561
7562 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7563
7564 <blockquote><p>
7565   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
7566   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
7567   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
7568   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
7569   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7570   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
7571   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7572 </p></blockquote>
7573
7574 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7575
7576 <blockquote><p>
7577   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
7578 </p></blockquote>
7579
7580       </div>
7581       <div class="tags">
7582
7583
7584         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7585
7586
7587       </div>
7588     </div>
7589     <div class="padding"></div>
7590
7591     <div class="entry">
7592       <div class="title">
7593         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
7594       </div>
7595       <div class="date">
7596         20th November 2010
7597       </div>
7598       <div class="body">
7599         <p>Answering
7600 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
7601 call from the Gnash project</a> for
7602 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
7603 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
7604 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
7605 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
7606 releases out more often.</p>
7607
7608 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
7609 I have considered setting up a <a
7610 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
7611 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
7612 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
7613 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
7614 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
7615 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
7616 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
7617 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
7618 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
7619 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
7620 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
7621 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
7622
7623       </div>
7624       <div class="tags">
7625
7626
7627         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7628
7629
7630       </div>
7631     </div>
7632     <div class="padding"></div>
7633
7634     <div class="entry">
7635       <div class="title">
7636         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
7637       </div>
7638       <div class="date">
7639          9th November 2010
7640       </div>
7641       <div class="body">
7642         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
7643
7644 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
7645 3D linked in from
7646 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
7647 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
7648
7649       </div>
7650       <div class="tags">
7651
7652
7653         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7654
7655
7656       </div>
7657     </div>
7658     <div class="padding"></div>
7659
7660     <div class="entry">
7661       <div class="title">
7662         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
7663       </div>
7664       <div class="date">
7665         24th October 2010
7666       </div>
7667       <div class="body">
7668         <p>Some updates.</p>
7669
7670 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
7671 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
7672 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
7673 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
7674 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
7675 :)</p>
7676
7677 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
7678 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
7679 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
7680 It is called
7681 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
7682 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
7683 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
7684 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
7685 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
7686 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
7687
7688 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
7689 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
7690 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
7691 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
7692 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
7693 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
7694 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
7695 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
7696 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
7697 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
7698
7699       </div>
7700       <div class="tags">
7701
7702
7703         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
7704
7705
7706       </div>
7707     </div>
7708     <div class="padding"></div>
7709
7710     <div class="entry">
7711       <div class="title">
7712         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_notes_on_Flash_in_Debian_and_Debian_Edu.html">Some notes on Flash in Debian and Debian Edu</a>
7713       </div>
7714       <div class="date">
7715          4th September 2010
7716       </div>
7717       <div class="body">
7718         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
7719 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
7720 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
7721 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
7722 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
7723 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
7724 installed.</p>
7725
7726 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
7727 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
7728 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
7729 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
7730 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7731 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
7732 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
7733 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
7734 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
7735
7736 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
7737 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
7738 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
7739 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
7740 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
7741 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
7742 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
7743 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
7744 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
7745 pages they want to visit.</p>
7746
7747 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
7748 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
7749 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
7750 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
7751 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
7752 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
7753 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
7754 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
7755 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
7756 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
7757 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
7758
7759       </div>
7760       <div class="tags">
7761
7762
7763         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7764
7765
7766       </div>
7767     </div>
7768     <div class="padding"></div>
7769
7770     <div class="entry">
7771       <div class="title">
7772         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
7773       </div>
7774       <div class="date">
7775         27th July 2010
7776       </div>
7777       <div class="body">
7778         <p>I discovered this while doing
7779 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
7780 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
7781 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
7782 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
7783 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
7784
7785 <p>An example is from todays
7786 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
7787 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
7788 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
7789 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
7790 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
7791 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
7792 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
7793
7794 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
7795
7796 <blockquote><pre>
7797 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
7798  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
7799   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
7800 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
7801  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
7802 </pre></blockquote>
7803
7804 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
7805 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
7806 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
7807 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
7808 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
7809 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
7810 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
7811 of dependency loops.</p>
7812
7813 <p>Thanks to
7814 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
7815 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
7816 dependencies
7817 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
7818 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
7819
7820 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
7821 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
7822 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
7823 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
7824 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
7825 it.</p>
7826
7827       </div>
7828       <div class="tags">
7829
7830
7831         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7832
7833
7834       </div>
7835     </div>
7836     <div class="padding"></div>
7837
7838     <div class="entry">
7839       <div class="title">
7840         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_are_they_searching_for___PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_in_LDAP.html">What are they searching for - PowerDNS and ISC DHCP in LDAP</a>
7841       </div>
7842       <div class="date">
7843         17th July 2010
7844       </div>
7845       <div class="body">
7846         <p>This is a
7847 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
7848 on my
7849 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">previous
7850 work</a> on
7851 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
7852 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
7853
7854 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
7855 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
7856 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
7857 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
7858
7859 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
7860 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
7861 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
7862
7863 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
7864
7865 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
7866 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
7867 the web.
7868
7869 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
7870 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
7871 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
7872 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
7873 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
7874 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
7875
7876 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
7877 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
7878 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
7879 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
7880 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
7881 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
7882 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
7883 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
7884 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
7885 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
7886 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
7887 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
7888 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
7889 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
7890 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
7891 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
7892
7893 <blockquote><pre>
7894 ldapsearch -h ldap \
7895   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
7896   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
7897   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
7898   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
7899   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
7900   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
7901
7902 ldapsearch -h ldap \
7903   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
7904   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
7905   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
7906   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
7907   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
7908 </pre></blockquote>
7909
7910 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
7911 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
7912 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
7913 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7914 also exist.</p>
7915
7916 <blockquote><pre>
7917 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7918 objectclass: top
7919 objectclass: dnsdomain
7920 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7921 dc: tjener
7922 arecord: 10.0.2.2
7923 associateddomain: tjener.intern
7924
7925 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7926 objectclass: top
7927 objectclass: dnsdomain2
7928 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7929 dc: 2
7930 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
7931 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
7932 </pre></blockquote>
7933
7934 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
7935 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
7936 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
7937 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
7938 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
7939 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
7940 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
7941 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
7942 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
7943 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
7944 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
7945 instead.</p>
7946
7947 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
7948 like this:</p>
7949
7950 <blockquote><pre>
7951 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
7952   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
7953   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
7954   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
7955   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
7956   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
7957
7958 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
7959   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
7960 </pre></blockquote>
7961
7962 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
7963 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
7964 reverse lookups.</p>
7965
7966 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
7967 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
7968 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
7969 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
7970
7971 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
7972 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
7973 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
7974
7975 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
7976 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
7977 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
7978 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
7979 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
7980
7981 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
7982 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
7983 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
7984 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
7985 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
7986
7987 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
7988 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
7989 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
7990 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
7991 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
7992 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
7993
7994 <blockquote><pre>
7995 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
7996     SUP top
7997     AUXILIARY
7998     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
7999           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
8000           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
8001           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
8002           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
8003     ))
8004 </pre></blockquote>
8005
8006 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
8007 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
8008 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
8009 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
8010 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
8011 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
8012
8013 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
8014
8015 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
8016 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
8017 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
8018 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
8019 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
8020
8021 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
8022 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
8023 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
8024 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
8025
8026 <blockquote><pre>
8027 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
8028 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
8029 </pre></blockquote>
8030
8031 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
8032 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
8033 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
8034 search result is this entry:</p>
8035
8036 <blockquote><pre>
8037 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8038 cn: dhcp
8039 objectClass: top
8040 objectClass: dhcpServer
8041 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8042 </pre></blockquote>
8043
8044 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
8045 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
8046 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
8047 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
8048 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
8049 The search result is this entry:</p>
8050
8051 <blockquote><pre>
8052 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8053 cn: DHCP Config
8054 objectClass: top
8055 objectClass: dhcpService
8056 objectClass: dhcpOptions
8057 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8058 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
8059 dhcpStatements: authoritative
8060 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
8061 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
8062 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
8063 </pre></blockquote>
8064
8065 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
8066 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
8067 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
8068 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
8069 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
8070 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
8071 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
8072 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
8073 related computer objects.</p>
8074
8075 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
8076 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
8077 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
8078 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
8079 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
8080 like:</p>
8081
8082 <blockquote><pre>
8083 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8084 cn: hostname
8085 objectClass: top
8086 objectClass: dhcpHost
8087 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8088 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
8089 </pre></blockquote>
8090
8091 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
8092 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
8093 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
8094 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
8095 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
8096 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
8097 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
8098 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
8099 structural object class.
8100
8101 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
8102
8103 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
8104 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
8105 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
8106 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
8107 in the configuration.</p>
8108
8109 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
8110 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
8111 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
8112 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
8113 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
8114 structure.</p>
8115
8116 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
8117 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
8118
8119 <blockquote><pre>
8120 ou=services
8121   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
8122     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
8123     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8124       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8125         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8126     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8127       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8128         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8129     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
8130       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
8131 </pre></blockquote>
8132
8133 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
8134 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
8135 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
8136 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
8137
8138 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
8139 like this:</p>
8140
8141 <blockquote><pre>
8142 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8143 dc: hostname
8144 objectClass: top
8145 objectClass: dhcpHost
8146 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8147 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
8148 associateddomain: hostname.intern
8149 arecord: 10.11.12.13
8150 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8151 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
8152 </pre></blockquote>
8153
8154 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
8155 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
8156 auxiliary object class.</p>
8157
8158       </div>
8159       <div class="tags">
8160
8161
8162         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8163
8164
8165       </div>
8166     </div>
8167     <div class="padding"></div>
8168
8169     <div class="entry">
8170       <div class="title">
8171         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
8172       </div>
8173       <div class="date">
8174         14th July 2010
8175       </div>
8176       <div class="body">
8177         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
8178 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
8179 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
8180 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
8181 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
8182
8183 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
8184 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
8185
8186 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
8187 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
8188 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
8189 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
8190 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
8191 to a slave DNS server.</p>
8192
8193 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
8194 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
8195 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
8196 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
8197 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
8198 seem to work.</p>
8199
8200 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
8201 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
8202 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
8203 this:</p>
8204
8205 <blockquote><pre>
8206   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8207   cn: hostname
8208   objectClass: dhcphost
8209   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8210   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
8211   associateddomain: hostname.intern
8212   arecord: 10.11.12.13
8213   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8214   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
8215   ldapconfigsound: Y
8216 </pre></blockquote>
8217
8218 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
8219 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
8220 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
8221 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
8222
8223 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
8224 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
8225 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
8226 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
8227 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
8228 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
8229 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
8230 might be a good place to put it.</p>
8231
8232 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8233 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8234
8235       </div>
8236       <div class="tags">
8237
8238
8239         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8240
8241
8242       </div>
8243     </div>
8244     <div class="padding"></div>
8245
8246     <div class="entry">
8247       <div class="title">
8248         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
8249       </div>
8250       <div class="date">
8251         11th July 2010
8252       </div>
8253       <div class="body">
8254         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
8255 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
8256 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
8257 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
8258
8259 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
8260 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
8261 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
8262 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
8263 LTSP clients.</p>
8264
8265 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
8266 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
8267 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
8268
8269 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
8270 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
8271 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
8272
8273 <blockquote><pre>
8274 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
8275 #
8276 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
8277 #
8278 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
8279 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
8280 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
8281 #
8282 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
8283 # existence of attribute names.
8284 #
8285 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
8286 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
8287 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
8288 #
8289 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
8290 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
8291 #
8292 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
8293 #     SUP top
8294 #     AUXILIARY
8295 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
8296
8297 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
8298 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
8299     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
8300     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
8301         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
8302         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
8303             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
8304             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
8305             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
8306             # bass value on to clients
8307             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
8308         done
8309     done
8310 fi
8311 </pre></blockquote>
8312
8313 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
8314 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
8315 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
8316 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
8317 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
8318
8319 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8320 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8321
8322 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
8323 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
8324 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
8325 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
8326 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
8327 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
8328
8329       </div>
8330       <div class="tags">
8331
8332
8333         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8334
8335
8336       </div>
8337     </div>
8338     <div class="padding"></div>
8339
8340     <div class="entry">
8341       <div class="title">
8342         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8343       </div>
8344       <div class="date">
8345          9th July 2010
8346       </div>
8347       <div class="body">
8348         <p>Since
8349 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
8350 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
8351 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
8352 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
8353 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
8354 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
8355 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
8356 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
8357 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
8358 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
8359 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
8360 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
8361 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
8362
8363       </div>
8364       <div class="tags">
8365
8366
8367         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8368
8369
8370       </div>
8371     </div>
8372     <div class="padding"></div>
8373
8374     <div class="entry">
8375       <div class="title">
8376         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__apt_vs_aptitude_with_the_Gnome_desktop.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, apt vs aptitude with the Gnome desktop</a>
8377       </div>
8378       <div class="date">
8379          3rd July 2010
8380       </div>
8381       <div class="body">
8382         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
8383 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
8384 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
8385 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
8386 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
8387 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
8388 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
8389 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
8390
8391 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
8392 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
8393 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
8394 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
8395 publish the difference.</p>
8396
8397 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8398
8399 <blockquote><p>
8400   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8401   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
8402   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
8403   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8404   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
8405   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8406   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
8407   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
8408 </p></blockquote>
8409
8410 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8411
8412 <blockquote><p>
8413   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
8414   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
8415   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
8416   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
8417   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
8418   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
8419   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8420   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
8421   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8422   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8423   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
8424   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
8425   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
8426   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
8427   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
8428   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
8429   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
8430   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
8431   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
8432   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
8433 </p></blockquote>
8434
8435 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8436
8437 <blockquote><p>
8438   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
8439   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
8440   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8441   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8442   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
8443   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
8444   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
8445   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8446   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8447   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8448   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8449   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
8450   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
8451   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
8452   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
8453   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
8454   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
8455   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
8456   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
8457   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
8458   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
8459 </p></blockquote>
8460
8461 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8462
8463 <blockquote><p>
8464   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
8465   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
8466   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
8467 </p></blockquote>
8468
8469 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
8470 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
8471 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
8472 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
8473 the difference somewhat.
8474
8475       </div>
8476       <div class="tags">
8477
8478
8479         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8480
8481
8482       </div>
8483     </div>
8484     <div class="padding"></div>
8485
8486     <div class="entry">
8487       <div class="title">
8488         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8489       </div>
8490       <div class="date">
8491         28th June 2010
8492       </div>
8493       <div class="body">
8494         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
8495 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
8496 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
8497 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
8498 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
8499 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
8500 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
8501 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
8502 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
8503 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
8504
8505 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
8506 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
8507 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
8508 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
8509 released.</p>
8510
8511 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
8512 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
8513 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
8514 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
8515
8516 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
8517 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8518
8519 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
8520 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
8521 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
8522 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
8523 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
8524
8525       </div>
8526       <div class="tags">
8527
8528
8529         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8530
8531
8532       </div>
8533     </div>
8534     <div class="padding"></div>
8535
8536     <div class="entry">
8537       <div class="title">
8538         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_a_change_to_LDAP_schemas_allowing_DNS_and_DHCP_info_to_be_combined_into_one_object.html">Idea for a change to LDAP schemas allowing DNS and DHCP info to be combined into one object</a>
8539       </div>
8540       <div class="date">
8541         24th June 2010
8542       </div>
8543       <div class="body">
8544         <p>A while back, I
8545 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
8546 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
8547 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
8548 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
8549
8550 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
8551 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
8552 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
8553 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
8554
8555 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
8556 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
8557 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
8558 Debian Edu.</p>
8559
8560 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
8561 the
8562 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
8563 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
8564 available today from IETF.</p>
8565
8566 <pre>
8567 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
8568 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
8569 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
8570  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
8571         NAME 'dhcpHost'
8572         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
8573 -       SUP top
8574 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
8575         MUST cn
8576         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
8577         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
8578 </pre>
8579
8580 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
8581 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
8582 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
8583
8584 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8585 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8586
8587       </div>
8588       <div class="tags">
8589
8590
8591         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8592
8593
8594       </div>
8595     </div>
8596     <div class="padding"></div>
8597
8598     <div class="entry">
8599       <div class="title">
8600         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
8601       </div>
8602       <div class="date">
8603         16th June 2010
8604       </div>
8605       <div class="body">
8606         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
8607 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
8608 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
8609 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
8610 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
8611 this:
8612
8613 <blockquote><pre>
8614 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8615 tasksel --new-install
8616 </pre></blockquote>
8617
8618 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
8619 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
8620 any output what so ever.
8621
8622 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
8623 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
8624 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
8625 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
8626 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
8627 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
8628 code like this:
8629
8630 <blockquote><pre>
8631 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8632 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
8633 $cmd
8634 </pre></blockquote>
8635
8636 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
8637 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
8638 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
8639 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
8640 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
8641 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
8642 installation.</p>
8643
8644 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
8645 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
8646 like this.</p>
8647
8648       </div>
8649       <div class="tags">
8650
8651
8652         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
8653
8654
8655       </div>
8656     </div>
8657     <div class="padding"></div>
8658
8659     <div class="entry">
8660       <div class="title">
8661         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lenny__Squeeze_upgrades__removals_by_apt_and_aptitude.html">Lenny->Squeeze upgrades, removals by apt and aptitude</a>
8662       </div>
8663       <div class="date">
8664         13th June 2010
8665       </div>
8666       <div class="body">
8667         <p>My
8668 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
8669 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
8670 finally made the upgrade logs available from
8671 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
8672 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
8673 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
8674 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
8675
8676 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
8677 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
8678 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
8679 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
8680 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
8681 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
8682 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
8683 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
8684
8685 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
8686 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
8687 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
8688 too surprising.</p>
8689
8690 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
8691 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
8692 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
8693 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
8694 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
8695 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
8696 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
8697 continue.</p>
8698
8699 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
8700 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
8701   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
8702   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
8703   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
8704   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
8705   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
8706   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8707   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8708   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
8709   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
8710   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
8711   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
8712   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8713   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8714   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8715   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8716   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8717   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
8718   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
8719   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
8720   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
8721   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
8722   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
8723   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
8724   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
8725   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
8726   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
8727   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
8728   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
8729
8730 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
8731
8732 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
8733   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
8734   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
8735   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
8736   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
8737   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
8738   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
8739   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
8740   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
8741   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
8742   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8743   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
8744   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8745   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
8746   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
8747   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
8748   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
8749   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
8750   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
8751   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
8752   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
8753   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
8754   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
8755   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
8756   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8757   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
8758   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
8759   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
8760   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
8761   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8762   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8763   zip</p>
8764
8765 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
8766
8767 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
8768   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
8769   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
8770   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
8771   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
8772   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
8773   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8774   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8775   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
8776   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
8777   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
8778   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
8779   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8780   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8781   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8782   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8783   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8784   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
8785   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
8786   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
8787   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
8788   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
8789   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
8790   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
8791   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
8792   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
8793   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
8794   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
8795
8796 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
8797 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
8798   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8799   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
8800   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
8801   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8802   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
8803   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
8804   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8805   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
8806   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
8807   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
8808   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
8809   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
8810   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
8811   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
8812   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
8813   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
8814   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
8815   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
8816   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
8817   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
8818   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
8819   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
8820   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
8821   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
8822   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
8823   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
8824   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
8825   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
8826   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
8827   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
8828   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
8829   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
8830   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
8831   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8832   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8833   xulrunner-1.9</p>
8834
8835
8836       </div>
8837       <div class="tags">
8838
8839
8840         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8841
8842
8843       </div>
8844     </div>
8845     <div class="padding"></div>
8846
8847     <div class="entry">
8848       <div class="title">
8849         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
8850       </div>
8851       <div class="date">
8852         11th June 2010
8853       </div>
8854       <div class="body">
8855         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
8856 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
8857 have been discovered and reported in the process
8858 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
8859 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
8860 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
8861 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
8862 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
8863
8864 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
8865 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
8866 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
8867 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
8868 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
8869 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
8870
8871 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
8872 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
8873 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
8874 is created.  The bug report
8875 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
8876 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
8877 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
8878 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
8879 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
8880 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
8881 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
8882 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
8883 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
8884 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
8885 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
8886 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
8887 Debian Squeeze.</p>
8888
8889 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
8890 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
8891 trick:</p>
8892
8893 <blockquote><pre>
8894 #!/bin/sh
8895 set -ex
8896
8897 if [ "$1" ] ; then
8898     desktop=$1
8899 else
8900     desktop=gnome
8901 fi
8902
8903 from=lenny
8904 to=squeeze
8905
8906 exec &lt; /dev/null
8907 unset LANG
8908 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
8909 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
8910 fuser -mv .
8911 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
8912 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
8913 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
8914 #!/bin/sh
8915 exit 101
8916 EOF
8917 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
8918 exit_cleanup() {
8919     umount $tmpdir/proc
8920 }
8921 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
8922 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
8923 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
8924
8925 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
8926
8927 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
8928 # to return the correct answers.
8929 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
8930     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
8931
8932 # Include the desktop and laptop task
8933 for test in desktop laptop ; do
8934     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
8935 #!/bin/sh
8936 exit 2
8937 EOF
8938     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
8939 done
8940
8941 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8942 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
8943 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
8944 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
8945
8946 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
8947 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
8948 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
8949 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
8950 fuser -mv
8951 </pre></blockquote>
8952
8953 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
8954 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
8955 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
8956 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
8957 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
8958 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
8959
8960 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
8961 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
8962 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
8963 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
8964 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
8965 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
8966 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
8967
8968 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
8969 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
8970 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
8971 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
8972 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
8973 packages.</p>
8974
8975       </div>
8976       <div class="tags">
8977
8978
8979         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8980
8981
8982       </div>
8983     </div>
8984     <div class="padding"></div>
8985
8986     <div class="entry">
8987       <div class="title">
8988         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Upstart_or_sysvinit___as_init_d_scripts_see_it.html">Upstart or sysvinit - as init.d scripts see it</a>
8989       </div>
8990       <div class="date">
8991          6th June 2010
8992       </div>
8993       <div class="body">
8994         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
8995 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
8996 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
8997 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
8998 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
8999 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
9000 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
9001
9002 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
9003 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
9004 COLUMNS):</p>
9005
9006 <blockquote><pre>
9007 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
9008 previous=N
9009 PREVLEVEL=
9010 RUNLEVEL=
9011 runlevel=S
9012 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
9013 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
9014 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
9015 </pre></blockquote>
9016
9017 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
9018 script.</p>
9019
9020 <blockquote><pre>
9021 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
9022 previous=N
9023 PREVLEVEL=N
9024 RUNLEVEL=S
9025 runlevel=S
9026 </pre></blockquote>
9027
9028 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
9029 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
9030 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
9031
9032 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
9033 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
9034 choice.</p>
9035
9036       </div>
9037       <div class="tags">
9038
9039
9040         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9041
9042
9043       </div>
9044     </div>
9045     <div class="padding"></div>
9046
9047     <div class="entry">
9048       <div class="title">
9049         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
9050       </div>
9051       <div class="date">
9052          6th June 2010
9053       </div>
9054       <div class="body">
9055         <p>Via the
9056 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
9057 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
9058 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
9059 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
9060 following the standards wars of today.</p>
9061
9062       </div>
9063       <div class="tags">
9064
9065
9066         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
9067
9068
9069       </div>
9070     </div>
9071     <div class="padding"></div>
9072
9073     <div class="entry">
9074       <div class="title">
9075         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_computer_hardware_models_used_at_site.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing computer hardware models used at site</a>
9076       </div>
9077       <div class="date">
9078          3rd June 2010
9079       </div>
9080       <div class="body">
9081         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
9082 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
9083 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
9084 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
9085 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
9086
9087 <blockquote><pre>
9088 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
9089   vendor                    count
9090   Dell Computer Corporation     1
9091     PowerEdge 1750              1
9092   IBM                           1
9093     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
9094   Intel                         2
9095   [no-dmi-info]                 3
9096 maintainer:~#
9097 </pre></blockquote>
9098
9099 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
9100 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
9101 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
9102 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
9103 option to list the individual machines.</p>
9104
9105 <p>A larger list is
9106 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
9107 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
9108 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
9109 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
9110 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
9111 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
9112 collector.</p>
9113
9114       </div>
9115       <div class="tags">
9116
9117
9118         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
9119
9120
9121       </div>
9122     </div>
9123     <div class="padding"></div>
9124
9125     <div class="entry">
9126       <div class="title">
9127         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/KDM_fail_at_boot_with_NVidia_cards___and_no_one_try_to_fix_it_.html">KDM fail at boot with NVidia cards - and no one try to fix it?</a>
9128       </div>
9129       <div class="date">
9130          1st June 2010
9131       </div>
9132       <div class="body">
9133         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
9134 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
9135 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
9136 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
9137 wait.</p>
9138
9139 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
9140 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
9141 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
9142 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
9143 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
9144 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
9145
9146 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
9147 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
9148 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
9149 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
9150 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
9151 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
9152 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
9153 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
9154
9155 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
9156
9157       </div>
9158       <div class="tags">
9159
9160
9161         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9162
9163
9164       </div>
9165     </div>
9166     <div class="padding"></div>
9167
9168     <div class="entry">
9169       <div class="title">
9170         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">Parallellized boot seem to hold up well in Debian/testing</a>
9171       </div>
9172       <div class="date">
9173         27th May 2010
9174       </div>
9175       <div class="body">
9176         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
9177 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
9178 issues are known and should be solved:
9179
9180 <p><ul>
9181
9182 <li>The wicd package seen to
9183 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
9184 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
9185 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
9186 seem to be on the case.</li>
9187
9188 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
9189 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
9190 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
9191 maintainer is on the case.</li>
9192
9193 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
9194 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
9195 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
9196 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
9197 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
9198 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
9199 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
9200 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
9201
9202 </ul></p>
9203
9204 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
9205 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
9206 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
9207 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
9208
9209 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9210 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9211 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9212 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9213
9214 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
9215
9216       </div>
9217       <div class="tags">
9218
9219
9220         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9221
9222
9223       </div>
9224     </div>
9225     <div class="padding"></div>
9226
9227     <div class="entry">
9228       <div class="title">
9229         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
9230       </div>
9231       <div class="date">
9232         22nd May 2010
9233       </div>
9234       <div class="body">
9235         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
9236 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
9237 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
9238 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
9239
9240 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
9241 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
9242 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
9243 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
9244 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
9245 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
9246 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
9247 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
9248 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
9249 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
9250 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
9251 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
9252 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
9253 going to work.</p>
9254
9255 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
9256 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
9257 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
9258 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
9259 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
9260 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
9261 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
9262 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
9263 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
9264 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
9265 Edu.</p>
9266
9267 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
9268 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
9269 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
9270 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
9271 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
9272 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
9273
9274 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
9275 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
9276
9277       </div>
9278       <div class="tags">
9279
9280
9281         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9282
9283
9284       </div>
9285     </div>
9286     <div class="padding"></div>
9287
9288     <div class="entry">
9289       <div class="title">
9290         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_is_now_the_default_in_Debian_unstable.html">Parallellized boot is now the default in Debian/unstable</a>
9291       </div>
9292       <div class="date">
9293         14th May 2010
9294       </div>
9295       <div class="body">
9296         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
9297 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
9298 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
9299 expected, if I am to believe the
9300 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9301 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
9302 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
9303 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
9304 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
9305 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
9306 version.</p>
9307
9308 More information about
9309 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9310 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
9311 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
9312 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
9313
9314 <blockquote><pre>
9315 CONCURRENCY=none
9316 </pre></blockquote>
9317
9318 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9319 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9320 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9321 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9322
9323       </div>
9324       <div class="tags">
9325
9326
9327         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9328
9329
9330       </div>
9331     </div>
9332     <div class="padding"></div>
9333
9334     <div class="entry">
9335       <div class="title">
9336         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sitesummary_tip__Listing_MAC_address_of_all_clients.html">Sitesummary tip: Listing MAC address of all clients</a>
9337       </div>
9338       <div class="date">
9339         14th May 2010
9340       </div>
9341       <div class="body">
9342         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
9343 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
9344 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
9345 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
9346 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
9347 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
9348 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
9349 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
9350
9351 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
9352 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
9353 this on the collector host:</p>
9354
9355 <blockquote><pre>
9356 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
9357 </pre></blockquote>
9358
9359 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
9360 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
9361
9362 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
9363 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
9364 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
9365 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
9366 written yet.</p>
9367
9368       </div>
9369       <div class="tags">
9370
9371
9372         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
9373
9374
9375       </div>
9376     </div>
9377     <div class="padding"></div>
9378
9379     <div class="entry">
9380       <div class="title">
9381         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
9382       </div>
9383       <div class="date">
9384         13th May 2010
9385       </div>
9386       <div class="body">
9387         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
9388 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
9389 has been
9390 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
9391
9392 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
9393 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
9394 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
9395 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
9396 based boot system.  Tollef is
9397 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
9398 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
9399 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
9400 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
9401 at the moment do not.</p>
9402
9403 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
9404 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
9405 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
9406 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
9407 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
9408 way forward.</p>
9409
9410 <p>In the mean time, based on the
9411 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9412 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
9413 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
9414 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
9415 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
9416 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
9417 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
9418 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
9419
9420       </div>
9421       <div class="tags">
9422
9423
9424         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9425
9426
9427       </div>
9428     </div>
9429     <div class="padding"></div>
9430
9431     <div class="entry">
9432       <div class="title">
9433         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
9434       </div>
9435       <div class="date">
9436          6th May 2010
9437       </div>
9438       <div class="body">
9439         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
9440 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
9441 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
9442 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
9443 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9444 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
9445 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
9446
9447 <blockquote><pre>
9448 CONCURRENCY=makefile
9449 </pre></blockquote>
9450
9451 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
9452 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
9453 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
9454 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
9455 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
9456 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
9457 make this happen.</p>
9458
9459 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
9460 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
9461 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
9462 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
9463 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
9464
9465 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
9466 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
9467 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
9468 fix the remaining issues.</p>
9469
9470 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9471 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9472 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9473 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9474
9475       </div>
9476       <div class="tags">
9477
9478
9479         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9480
9481
9482       </div>
9483     </div>
9484     <div class="padding"></div>
9485
9486     <div class="entry">
9487       <div class="title">
9488         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_has_switched_to_dependency_based_boot_sequencing.html">Debian has switched to dependency based boot sequencing</a>
9489       </div>
9490       <div class="date">
9491         27th July 2009
9492       </div>
9493       <div class="body">
9494         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
9495 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
9496 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
9497 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
9498 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
9499 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
9500 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
9501
9502 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
9503 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
9504 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
9505
9506       </div>
9507       <div class="tags">
9508
9509
9510         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9511
9512
9513       </div>
9514     </div>
9515     <div class="padding"></div>
9516
9517     <div class="entry">
9518       <div class="title">
9519         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
9520       </div>
9521       <div class="date">
9522         22nd July 2009
9523       </div>
9524       <div class="body">
9525         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
9526 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
9527 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
9528 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
9529 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
9530 the package up to date.</p>
9531
9532 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
9533 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
9534 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
9535 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
9536 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
9537 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
9538 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
9539 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
9540 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
9541 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
9542 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
9543 working on the future release.</p>
9544
9545 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
9546 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
9547
9548       </div>
9549       <div class="tags">
9550
9551
9552         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9553
9554
9555       </div>
9556     </div>
9557     <div class="padding"></div>
9558
9559     <div class="entry">
9560       <div class="title">
9561         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
9562       </div>
9563       <div class="date">
9564         24th June 2009
9565       </div>
9566       <div class="body">
9567         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
9568 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
9569 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
9570 funded
9571 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
9572 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
9573 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
9574 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
9575 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
9576 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
9577
9578 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
9579 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
9580 boot:</p>
9581
9582 <ul>
9583
9584 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
9585
9586 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
9587    clock is in UTC.</li>
9588
9589 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
9590    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9591    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
9592
9593 </ul>
9594
9595 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
9596 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
9597 Villegas</a>.
9598
9599 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
9600 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
9601 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
9602 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
9603 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
9604 using this.</p>
9605
9606 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
9607 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
9608 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
9609 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
9610 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
9611 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
9612 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
9613
9614       </div>
9615       <div class="tags">
9616
9617
9618         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9619
9620
9621       </div>
9622     </div>
9623     <div class="padding"></div>
9624
9625     <div class="entry">
9626       <div class="title">
9627         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
9628       </div>
9629       <div class="date">
9630         17th May 2009
9631       </div>
9632       <div class="body">
9633         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
9634 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
9635 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
9636 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
9637 dager siden kom
9638 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
9639 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
9640 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
9641 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
9642 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
9643
9644 <blockquote>
9645 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
9646 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
9647 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
9648 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
9649 </blockquote>
9650
9651 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
9652 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
9653 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
9654 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
9655 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
9656
9657 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
9658 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
9659 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
9660
9661       </div>
9662       <div class="tags">
9663
9664
9665         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
9666
9667
9668       </div>
9669     </div>
9670     <div class="padding"></div>
9671
9672     <div class="entry">
9673       <div class="title">
9674         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
9675       </div>
9676       <div class="date">
9677          7th May 2009
9678       </div>
9679       <div class="body">
9680         <p>Kom over
9681 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
9682 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
9683 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
9684 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
9685 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
9686 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
9687 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
9688
9689       </div>
9690       <div class="tags">
9691
9692
9693         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9694
9695
9696       </div>
9697     </div>
9698     <div class="padding"></div>
9699
9700     <div class="entry">
9701       <div class="title">
9702         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
9703       </div>
9704       <div class="date">
9705          2nd May 2009
9706       </div>
9707       <div class="body">
9708         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
9709 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
9710 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
9711 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
9712 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
9713 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
9714 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
9715 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
9716 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
9717 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
9718 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
9719 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
9720 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
9721 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
9722 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
9723 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
9724 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
9725 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
9726 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
9727 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
9728
9729 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
9730 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
9731 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
9732 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
9733 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
9734 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
9735 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
9736 betydelige.</p>
9737
9738       </div>
9739       <div class="tags">
9740
9741
9742         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
9743
9744
9745       </div>
9746     </div>
9747     <div class="padding"></div>
9748
9749     <div class="entry">
9750       <div class="title">
9751         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Two_projects_that_have_improved_the_quality_of_free_software_a_lot.html">Two projects that have improved the quality of free software a lot</a>
9752       </div>
9753       <div class="date">
9754          2nd May 2009
9755       </div>
9756       <div class="body">
9757         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
9758 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
9759 do not yet know them.</p>
9760
9761 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
9762 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
9763 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
9764 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
9765 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
9766 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
9767 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
9768 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
9769 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
9770 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
9771 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
9772
9773 <p>The second one is
9774 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
9775 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
9776 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
9777 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
9778 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
9779 and the company behind it is running
9780 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
9781 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
9782 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
9783 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
9784 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
9785 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
9786 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
9787 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
9788
9789 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
9790 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
9791 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
9792 surrounded by today.</p>
9793
9794       </div>
9795       <div class="tags">
9796
9797
9798         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9799
9800
9801       </div>
9802     </div>
9803     <div class="padding"></div>
9804
9805     <div class="entry">
9806       <div class="title">
9807         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_patch_is_not_better_than_a_useless_patch.html">No patch is not better than a useless patch</a>
9808       </div>
9809       <div class="date">
9810         28th April 2009
9811       </div>
9812       <div class="body">
9813         <p>Julien Blache
9814 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
9815 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
9816 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
9817 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
9818 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
9819 properties.</p>
9820
9821       </div>
9822       <div class="tags">
9823
9824
9825         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9826
9827
9828       </div>
9829     </div>
9830     <div class="padding"></div>
9831
9832     <div class="entry">
9833       <div class="title">
9834         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html">Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</a>
9835       </div>
9836       <div class="date">
9837         30th March 2009
9838       </div>
9839       <div class="body">
9840         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
9841 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
9842 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
9843 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
9844 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
9845 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
9846 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
9847 application.</p>
9848
9849 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
9850 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
9851 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
9852 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
9853 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
9854 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
9855 blocked from doing so.</p>
9856
9857 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
9858 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
9859 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
9860 requirements change.</p>
9861
9862 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
9863 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
9864 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
9865
9866       </div>
9867       <div class="tags">
9868
9869
9870         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
9871
9872
9873       </div>
9874     </div>
9875     <div class="padding"></div>
9876
9877     <div class="entry">
9878       <div class="title">
9879         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
9880       </div>
9881       <div class="date">
9882         29th March 2009
9883       </div>
9884       <div class="body">
9885         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
9886 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
9887 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
9888 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
9889 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
9890 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
9891 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
9892 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
9893 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
9894 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
9895 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
9896 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
9897 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
9898 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
9899 now. :)</p>
9900
9901       </div>
9902       <div class="tags">
9903
9904
9905         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9906
9907
9908       </div>
9909     </div>
9910     <div class="padding"></div>
9911
9912     <div class="entry">
9913       <div class="title">
9914         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">Time for new  LDAP schemas replacing RFC 2307?</a>
9915       </div>
9916       <div class="date">
9917         29th March 2009
9918       </div>
9919       <div class="body">
9920         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
9921 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
9922 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
9923 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
9924 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
9925 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
9926
9927 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
9928 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
9929 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
9930 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
9931 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
9932 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
9933 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
9934 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
9935 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
9936 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
9937 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
9938 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
9939 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
9940
9941 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
9942 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
9943 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
9944 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
9945
9946 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
9947 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
9948
9949 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
9950 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
9951 new IETF work group?</p>
9952
9953       </div>
9954       <div class="tags">
9955
9956
9957         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9958
9959
9960       </div>
9961     </div>
9962     <div class="padding"></div>
9963
9964     <div class="entry">
9965       <div class="title">
9966         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
9967       </div>
9968       <div class="date">
9969         15th February 2009
9970       </div>
9971       <div class="body">
9972         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
9973 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
9974 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
9975 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
9976 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
9977 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
9978 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
9979 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
9980 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
9981 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
9982 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
9983 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
9984
9985       </div>
9986       <div class="tags">
9987
9988
9989         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
9990
9991
9992       </div>
9993     </div>
9994     <div class="padding"></div>
9995
9996     <div class="entry">
9997       <div class="title">
9998         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Devcamp_brought_us_closer_to_the_Lenny_based_Debian_Edu_release.html">Devcamp brought us closer to the Lenny based Debian Edu release</a>
9999       </div>
10000       <div class="date">
10001          7th December 2008
10002       </div>
10003       <div class="body">
10004         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
10005 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
10006 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
10007 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
10008 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
10009 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
10010 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
10011 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
10012
10013 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
10014 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
10015 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
10016 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
10017 of these cards.</p>
10018
10019       </div>
10020       <div class="tags">
10021
10022
10023         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp</a>.
10024
10025
10026       </div>
10027     </div>
10028     <div class="padding"></div>
10029
10030     <div class="entry">
10031       <div class="title">
10032         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_sorry_state_of_multimedia_browser_plugins_in_Debian.html">The sorry state of multimedia browser plugins in Debian</a>
10033       </div>
10034       <div class="date">
10035         25th November 2008
10036       </div>
10037       <div class="body">
10038         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
10039 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
10040 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
10041 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
10042 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
10043 notes are available on
10044 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
10045 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
10046 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
10047 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
10048 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
10049 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
10050 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
10051 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
10052 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
10053
10054 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
10055 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
10056
10057       </div>
10058       <div class="tags">
10059
10060
10061         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10062
10063
10064       </div>
10065     </div>
10066     <div class="padding"></div>
10067
10068     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
10069     <div id="sidebar">
10070
10071
10072
10073 <h2>Archive</h2>
10074 <ul>
10075
10076 <li>2016
10077 <ul>
10078
10079 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
10080
10081 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
10082
10083 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (1)</a></li>
10084
10085 </ul></li>
10086
10087 <li>2015
10088 <ul>
10089
10090 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
10091
10092 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
10093
10094 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
10095
10096 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
10097
10098 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
10099
10100 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
10101
10102 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
10103
10104 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
10105
10106 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
10107
10108 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
10109
10110 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
10111
10112 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10113
10114 </ul></li>
10115
10116 <li>2014
10117 <ul>
10118
10119 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
10120
10121 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
10122
10123 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
10124
10125 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
10126
10127 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
10128
10129 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
10130
10131 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
10132
10133 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
10134
10135 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
10136
10137 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
10138
10139 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10140
10141 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
10142
10143 </ul></li>
10144
10145 <li>2013
10146 <ul>
10147
10148 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
10149
10150 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
10151
10152 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
10153
10154 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
10155
10156 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10157
10158 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
10159
10160 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
10161
10162 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
10163
10164 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
10165
10166 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
10167
10168 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
10169
10170 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10171
10172 </ul></li>
10173
10174 <li>2012
10175 <ul>
10176
10177 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
10178
10179 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
10180
10181 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
10182
10183 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
10184
10185 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
10186
10187 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
10188
10189 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
10190
10191 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
10192
10193 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
10194
10195 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
10196
10197 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
10198
10199 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
10200
10201 </ul></li>
10202
10203 <li>2011
10204 <ul>
10205
10206 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
10207
10208 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
10209
10210 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
10211
10212 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
10213
10214 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
10215
10216 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
10217
10218 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
10219
10220 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
10221
10222 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
10223
10224 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
10225
10226 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10227
10228 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
10229
10230 </ul></li>
10231
10232 <li>2010
10233 <ul>
10234
10235 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
10236
10237 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
10238
10239 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
10240
10241 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
10242
10243 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10244
10245 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
10246
10247 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
10248
10249 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
10250
10251 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
10252
10253 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
10254
10255 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
10256
10257 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
10258
10259 </ul></li>
10260
10261 <li>2009
10262 <ul>
10263
10264 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
10265
10266 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
10267
10268 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
10269
10270 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
10271
10272 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10273
10274 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
10275
10276 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
10277
10278 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
10279
10280 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
10281
10282 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
10283
10284 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10285
10286 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10287
10288 </ul></li>
10289
10290 <li>2008
10291 <ul>
10292
10293 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
10294
10295 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
10296
10297 </ul></li>
10298
10299 </ul>
10300
10301
10302
10303 <h2>Tags</h2>
10304 <ul>
10305
10306  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
10307
10308  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
10309
10310  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
10311
10312  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
10313
10314  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
10315
10316  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
10317
10318  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
10319
10320  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
10321
10322  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (121)</a></li>
10323
10324  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (154)</a></li>
10325
10326  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
10327
10328  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
10329
10330  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (20)</a></li>
10331
10332  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
10333
10334  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (303)</a></li>
10335
10336  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
10337
10338  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
10339
10340  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (25)</a></li>
10341
10342  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
10343
10344  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
10345
10346  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
10347
10348  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
10349
10350  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (11)</a></li>
10351
10352  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
10353
10354  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
10355
10356  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
10357
10358  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
10359
10360  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
10361
10362  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
10363
10364  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (37)</a></li>
10365
10366  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (7)</a></li>
10367
10368  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (273)</a></li>
10369
10370  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
10371
10372  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (22)</a></li>
10373
10374  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
10375
10376  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (58)</a></li>
10377
10378  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (92)</a></li>
10379
10380  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
10381
10382  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
10383
10384  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
10385
10386  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
10387
10388  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
10389
10390  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
10391
10392  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
10393
10394  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
10395
10396  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (45)</a></li>
10397
10398  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
10399
10400  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
10401
10402  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
10403
10404  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
10405
10406  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
10407
10408  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (36)</a></li>
10409
10410  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
10411
10412  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
10413
10414  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
10415
10416  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (55)</a></li>
10417
10418  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
10419
10420  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
10421
10422 </ul>
10423
10424
10425     </div>
10426     <p style="text-align: right">
10427  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
10428 </p>
10429
10430   </body>
10431 </html>