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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/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         17th November 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
  32 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
  33 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
  34 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
  35 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
  36 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
  37 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
  38 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
  39 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
  40 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
  41
  42 <pre>
  43 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/EE4E02F9.html">EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
  44       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
  45 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
  46 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
  47 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
  48 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
  49 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
  50 </pre>
  51
  52 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
  53 my old key.</p>
  54
  55 <p>If you signed my old key
  56 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
  57 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
  58 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
  59 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
  60
  61       </div>
  62       <div class="tags">
  63
  64
  65         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>.
  66
  67
  68       </div>
  69     </div>
  70     <div class="padding"></div>
  71
  72     <div class="entry">
  73       <div class="title">
  74         <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>
  75       </div>
  76       <div class="date">
  77         24th September 2015
  78       </div>
  79       <div class="body">
  80         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
  81 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
  82 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
  83 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
  84 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
  85 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
  86 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
  87
  88 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
  89
  90 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
  91 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
  92 by someone else.  I found
  93 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
  94 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
  95 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
  96 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
  97 from him.  Via
  98 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
  99 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
 100 discovered
 101 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
 102 available in Debian.</p>
 103
 104 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
 105 battery stats ever since. Now my
 106 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
 107 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
 108 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
 109 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
 110
 111 <pre>
 112 #!/bin/sh
 113 # Inspired by
 114 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
 115 # See also
 116 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
 117 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
 118
 119 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
 120     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
 121
 122 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
 123     (
 124         printf "timestamp,"
 125         for f in $files; do
 126             printf "%s," $f
 127         done
 128         echo
 129     ) > "$logfile"
 130 fi
 131
 132 log_battery() {
 133     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
 134     # when several log processes run in parallel.
 135     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
 136         for f in $files; do \
 137             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
 138         done)
 139     echo "$msg"
 140 }
 141
 142 cd /sys/class/power_supply
 143
 144 for bat in BAT*; do
 145     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
 146 done
 147 </pre>
 148
 149 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
 150 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
 151 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
 152 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
 153 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
 154 The code for the Debian package
 155 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
 156 available on github</a>.</p>
 157
 158 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
 159
 160 <pre>
 161 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
 162 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
 163 [...]
 164 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 165 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 166 </pre>
 167
 168 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
 169 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
 170 battery.</p>
 171
 172 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
 173 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
 174 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
 175 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
 176 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
 177 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
 178 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
 179 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
 180 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
 181 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
 182 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
 183 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
 184 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
 185 Linux too.</p>
 186
 187 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
 188 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
 189 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
 190 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
 191 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
 192 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
 193 load).</p>
 194
 195 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
 196 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
 197 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
 198 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
 199 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
 200 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
 201 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
 202 those.</p>
 203
 204 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
 205 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
 206 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
 207 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
 208 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
 209 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
 210 specific.</p>
 211
 212       </div>
 213       <div class="tags">
 214
 215
 216         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>.
 217
 218
 219       </div>
 220     </div>
 221     <div class="padding"></div>
 222
 223     <div class="entry">
 224       <div class="title">
 225         <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>
 226       </div>
 227       <div class="date">
 228          5th July 2015
 229       </div>
 230       <div class="body">
 231         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
 232 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
 233 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
 234 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
 235 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
 236 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
 237 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
 238 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
 239 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
 240 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
 241 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
 242
 243 <p>One tip I got was to use the
 244 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
 245 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
 246 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
 247 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
 248 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
 249 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
 250
 251 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
 252 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
 253 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
 254 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
 255 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
 256 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
 257 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
 258 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
 259 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
 260 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
 261 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
 262 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
 263 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
 264 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
 265 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
 266
 267 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
 268 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
 269 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
 270 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
 271
 272 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
 273 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
 274
 275 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
 276 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
 277 different
 278 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
 279 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
 280
 281       </div>
 282       <div class="tags">
 283
 284
 285         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>.
 286
 287
 288       </div>
 289     </div>
 290     <div class="padding"></div>
 291
 292     <div class="entry">
 293       <div class="title">
 294         <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>
 295       </div>
 296       <div class="date">
 297          3rd July 2015
 298       </div>
 299       <div class="body">
 300         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
 301 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
 302 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
 303 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
 304 flickering.</p>
 305
 306 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
 307 still as
 308 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
 309 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
 310 good help from
 311 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
 312 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
 313 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
 314 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
 315 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
 316 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
 317 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
 318 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
 319 deteriorated since X41.</p>
 320
 321 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
 322 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
 323 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
 324 have suggestions.</p>
 325
 326 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
 327 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
 328 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
 329
 330       </div>
 331       <div class="tags">
 332
 333
 334         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>.
 335
 336
 337       </div>
 338     </div>
 339     <div class="padding"></div>
 340
 341     <div class="entry">
 342       <div class="title">
 343         <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>
 344       </div>
 345       <div class="date">
 346         22nd November 2014
 347       </div>
 348       <div class="body">
 349         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
 350 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
 351 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
 352 courtesy of
 353 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
 354 Schubert</a> and
 355 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
 356 McVittie</a>.
 357
 358 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
 359 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
 360 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
 361 you upgrade:</p>
 362
 363 <p><blockquote><pre>
 364 Package: systemd-sysv
 365 Pin: release o=Debian
 366 Pin-Priority: -1
 367 </pre></blockquote><p>
 368
 369 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
 370 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
 371 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
 372 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
 373 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
 374
 375 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
 376 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
 377 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
 378 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
 379 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
 380 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
 381
 382 <p><blockquote><pre>
 383 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
 384 </pre></blockquote><p>
 385
 386 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
 387
 388 <p><blockquote><pre>
 389 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
 390 </pre></blockquote><p>
 391
 392 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
 393 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
 394
 395 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
 396 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
 397 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
 398 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
 399 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
 400 Jessie is released.</p>
 401
 402 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
 403 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
 404 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
 405 line.</p>
 406
 407       </div>
 408       <div class="tags">
 409
 410
 411         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>.
 412
 413
 414       </div>
 415     </div>
 416     <div class="padding"></div>
 417
 418     <div class="entry">
 419       <div class="title">
 420         <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>
 421       </div>
 422       <div class="date">
 423         10th November 2014
 424       </div>
 425       <div class="body">
 426         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
 427 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
 428 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
 429
 430 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
 431 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
 432 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
 433 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
 434 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
 435 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
 436 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
 437 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
 438 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
 439 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
 440 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
 441 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
 442 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
 443 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
 444 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
 445
 446 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
 447 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
 448 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
 449 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
 450 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
 451 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
 452 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
 453 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
 454 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
 455 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
 456 were fairly easy, and
 457 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
 458 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
 459 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
 460 useful approach.</p>
 461
 462 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
 463 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
 464 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
 465 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
 466 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
 467 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
 468 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
 469 this:</p>
 470
 471 <p><blockquote><pre>
 472 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
 473   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
 474 </pre></blockquote></p>
 475
 476 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
 477 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
 478
 479 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
 480 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
 481 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
 482 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
 483 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
 484 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
 485 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
 486 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
 487 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
 488 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
 489 system.</p>
 490
 491 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
 492 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
 493 SMTorP. :)</p>
 494
 495       </div>
 496       <div class="tags">
 497
 498
 499         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>.
 500
 501
 502       </div>
 503     </div>
 504     <div class="padding"></div>
 505
 506     <div class="entry">
 507       <div class="title">
 508         <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>
 509       </div>
 510       <div class="date">
 511         22nd October 2014
 512       </div>
 513       <div class="body">
 514         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
 515 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
 516 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
 517 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
 518 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
 519 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
 520 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
 521 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
 522 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
 523 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
 524 lists I recently took over:</p>
 525
 526 <p><blockquote><pre>
 527 % time listadmin xiph
 528 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 529 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
 530
 531 real    0m1.709s
 532 user    0m0.232s
 533 sys     0m0.012s
 534 %
 535 </pre></blockquote></p>
 536
 537 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
 538 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
 539 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
 540 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
 541 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
 542 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
 543 program.</p>
 544
 545 <p>If you install
 546 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
 547 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
 548 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
 549
 550 <p><blockquote><pre>
 551 username username@example.org
 552 spamlevel 23
 553 default discard
 554 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
 555
 556 password secret
 557 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
 558 mailman-list@lists.example.com
 559
 560 password hidden
 561 other-list@otherserver.example.org
 562 </pre></blockquote></p>
 563
 564 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
 565 learn the details.</p>
 566
 567 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
 568 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
 569 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
 570 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
 571
 572 <p><blockquote><pre>
 573 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
 574 </pre></blockquote></p>
 575
 576 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
 577 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
 578 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
 579 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
 580 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
 581 email.</p>
 582
 583 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
 584 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
 585 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
 586 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
 587 software.</p>
 588
 589 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 590 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 591 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 592
 593 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
 594 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
 595 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
 596 sure why.</p>
 597
 598       </div>
 599       <div class="tags">
 600
 601
 602         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 603
 604
 605       </div>
 606     </div>
 607     <div class="padding"></div>
 608
 609     <div class="entry">
 610       <div class="title">
 611         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
 612       </div>
 613       <div class="date">
 614         17th October 2014
 615       </div>
 616       <div class="body">
 617         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
 618 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
 619 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
 620 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
 621 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
 622 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
 623 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
 624
 625 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
 626 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
 627 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
 628 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
 629 of this story.)</p>
 630
 631 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
 632 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
 633 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
 634 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
 635 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
 636 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
 637 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
 638 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
 639 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
 640 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
 641
 642 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
 643 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
 644 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
 645 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
 646
 647 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
 648 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
 649
 650 <p><blockquote><pre>
 651 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
 652 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
 653 </pre></blockquote></p>
 654
 655 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
 656 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
 657 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
 658 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
 659 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
 660 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
 661 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
 662 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
 663
 664 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
 665 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
 666
 667 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
 668 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
 669 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
 670 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
 671 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
 672
 673 <p><blockquote><pre>
 674 Task: isenkram-packages
 675 Section: hardware
 676 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 677  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 678  proposed.
 679 Test-new-install: show show
 680 Relevance: 8
 681 Packages: for-current-hardware
 682
 683 Task: isenkram-firmware
 684 Section: hardware
 685 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 686  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
 687  packages are proposed.
 688 Test-new-install: mark show
 689 Relevance: 8
 690 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
 691 </pre></blockquote></p>
 692
 693 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
 694 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
 695 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
 696 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
 697 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
 698
 699 <p><blockquote><pre>
 700 #!/bin/sh
 701 #
 702 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
 703 export PATH
 704 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 705 </pre></blockquote></p>
 706
 707 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
 708 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
 709
 710 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
 711 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
 712 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
 713 install.</p>
 714
 715 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
 716 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
 717 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
 718
 719       </div>
 720       <div class="tags">
 721
 722
 723         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>.
 724
 725
 726       </div>
 727     </div>
 728     <div class="padding"></div>
 729
 730     <div class="entry">
 731       <div class="title">
 732         <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>
 733       </div>
 734       <div class="date">
 735          4th October 2014
 736       </div>
 737       <div class="body">
 738         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
 739 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
 740 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
 741 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
 742
 743 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
 744
 745 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
 746 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
 747 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
 748
 749       </div>
 750       <div class="tags">
 751
 752
 753         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>.
 754
 755
 756       </div>
 757     </div>
 758     <div class="padding"></div>
 759
 760     <div class="entry">
 761       <div class="title">
 762         <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>
 763       </div>
 764       <div class="date">
 765          4th October 2014
 766       </div>
 767       <div class="body">
 768         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
 769 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
 770 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
 771 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
 772 Dibb.</p>
 773
 774 <p>I just wrapped up
 775 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
 776 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
 777 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
 778 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
 779 0.17.</p>
 780
 781 <ul>
 782
 783  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
 784  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
 785    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
 786  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
 787  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
 788  <li>Fix include orders</li>
 789  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
 790  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
 791  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
 792    the palette size is the same.</li>
 793  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
 794  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
 795  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
 796  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
 797    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
 798
 799 </ul>
 800
 801 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
 802 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
 803 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
 804
 805       </div>
 806       <div class="tags">
 807
 808
 809         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>.
 810
 811
 812       </div>
 813     </div>
 814     <div class="padding"></div>
 815
 816     <div class="entry">
 817       <div class="title">
 818         <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>
 819       </div>
 820       <div class="date">
 821         26th September 2014
 822       </div>
 823       <div class="body">
 824         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 825 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
 826 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
 827 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
 828 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
 829 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
 830 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
 831 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
 832 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
 833 future.  The
 834 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
 835 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
 836 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
 837 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
 838 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
 839
 840 <p>First, download the test ISO via
 841 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
 842 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
 843 or rsync (use
 844 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
 845 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
 846 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
 847 install with some tweaking.</p>
 848
 849 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
 850 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
 851
 852 <p><blockquote><pre>
 853 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
 854 </pre></blockquote></p>
 855
 856 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
 857 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
 858 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
 859 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
 860
 861 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
 862 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
 863 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
 864 your need.</p>
 865
 866 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
 867 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
 868 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
 869 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
 870 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
 871 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
 872 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
 873 days.</p>
 874
 875 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
 876 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
 877 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
 878 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
 879 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
 880 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
 881 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
 882 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
 883 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
 884
 885 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
 886 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
 887 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
 888
 889       </div>
 890       <div class="tags">
 891
 892
 893         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>.
 894
 895
 896       </div>
 897     </div>
 898     <div class="padding"></div>
 899
 900     <div class="entry">
 901       <div class="title">
 902         <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>
 903       </div>
 904       <div class="date">
 905         25th September 2014
 906       </div>
 907       <div class="body">
 908         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
 909 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
 910 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
 911 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
 912 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
 913 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
 914 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
 915 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
 916 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
 917 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
 918 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
 919 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
 920 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
 921
 922 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
 923 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
 924 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
 925 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
 926 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
 927 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
 928 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
 929 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
 930 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
 931 list</a>. :)</p>
 932
 933       </div>
 934       <div class="tags">
 935
 936
 937         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>.
 938
 939
 940       </div>
 941     </div>
 942     <div class="padding"></div>
 943
 944     <div class="entry">
 945       <div class="title">
 946         <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>
 947       </div>
 948       <div class="date">
 949         16th September 2014
 950       </div>
 951       <div class="body">
 952         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
 953 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
 954 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
 955 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
 956 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
 957 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
 958 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
 959 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
 960 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
 961 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
 962 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
 963 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
 964 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
 965 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
 966
 967 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
 968 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
 969 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
 970 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
 971 depend on the small and clever package
 972 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
 973 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
 974 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
 975 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
 976 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
 977 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
 978 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
 979 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
 980 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
 981 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
 982 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
 983
 984 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
 985 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
 986 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
 987 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
 988 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
 989 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
 990 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
 991 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
 992 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
 993 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
 994 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
 995 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
 996 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
 997 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
 998 dialog.</p>
 999
1000 <p><table>
1001
1002 <tr>
1003 <th>Machine/setup</th>
1004 <th>Original tasksel</th>
1005 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
1006 <th>Reduction</th>
1007 </tr>
1008
1009 <tr>
1010 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
1011 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
1012 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
1013 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
1014 </tr>
1015
1016 <tr>
1017 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
1018 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
1019 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
1020 <td>23 min 40%</td>
1021 </tr>
1022
1023 <tr>
1024 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
1025 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
1026 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
1027 <td>11 min 50%</td>
1028 </tr>
1029
1030 <tr>
1031 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
1032 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
1033 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
1034 <td>2 min 33%</td>
1035 </tr>
1036
1037 <tr>
1038 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
1039 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
1040 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
1041 <td>4 min 21%</td>
1042 </tr>
1043
1044 </table></p>
1045
1046 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
1047 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
1048 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
1049 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
1050 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
1051 installed.</p>
1052
1053 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
1054 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
1055 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
1056 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
1057 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
1058 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
1059 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
1060 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
1061 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
1062 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
1063 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
1064 for the entire installation.</p>
1065
1066 <p>I've implemented this in the
1067 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
1068 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
1069 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
1070 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
1071 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
1072
1073 <p><blockquote><pre>
1074 #!/bin/sh
1075 set -e
1076 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1077 info() {
1078     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
1079 }
1080 error() {
1081     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
1082 }
1083 override_install() {
1084     apt-install eatmydata || true
1085     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
1086         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1087             file=/usr/bin/$bin
1088             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
1089             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
1090                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
1091                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
1092                     > /target$file.edu
1093                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
1094                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1095                     --rename --quiet --add $file
1096                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
1097             else
1098                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
1099             fi
1100         done
1101     else
1102         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
1103     fi
1104 }
1105
1106 override_install
1107 </pre></blockquote></p>
1108
1109 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
1110 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
1111
1112 <p><blockquote><pre>
1113 #! /bin/sh -e
1114 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1115 error() {
1116     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
1117 }
1118 remove_install_override() {
1119     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1120         file=/usr/bin/$bin
1121         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
1122             rm /target$file
1123             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1124                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
1125             rm /target$file.edu
1126         else
1127             error "Missing divert for $file."
1128         fi
1129     done
1130     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
1131 }
1132
1133 remove_install_override
1134 </pre></blockquote></p>
1135
1136 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
1137 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
1138 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
1139
1140 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
1141 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
1142 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
1143 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
1144 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
1145 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
1146 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
1147 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
1148 everyone.</p>
1149
1150 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
1151 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
1152 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
1153 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
1154
1155 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
1156 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
1157 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1158 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
1159 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
1160
1161 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
1162 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
1163 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1164 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
1165 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
1166
1167       </div>
1168       <div class="tags">
1169
1170
1171         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>.
1172
1173
1174       </div>
1175     </div>
1176     <div class="padding"></div>
1177
1178     <div class="entry">
1179       <div class="title">
1180         <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>
1181       </div>
1182       <div class="date">
1183         10th September 2014
1184       </div>
1185       <div class="body">
1186         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
1187 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
1188 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
1189 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
1190 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
1191 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
1192 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
1193 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
1194 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
1195 those problems are gone now.</p>
1196
1197 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
1198 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
1199 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
1200 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
1201 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
1202
1203 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
1204 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
1205 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
1206
1207 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
1208 line:</p>
1209
1210 <p><blockquote><pre>
1211 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
1212 </pre></blockquote></p>
1213
1214 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
1215 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
1216 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
1217 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
1218
1219 <p><blockquote><pre>
1220 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
1221 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
1222 %
1223 </pre></blockquote></p>
1224
1225 <p>Now if only
1226 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
1227 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
1228 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
1229 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
1230 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
1231 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
1232 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
1233 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
1234 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
1235
1236       </div>
1237       <div class="tags">
1238
1239
1240         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1241
1242
1243       </div>
1244     </div>
1245     <div class="padding"></div>
1246
1247     <div class="entry">
1248       <div class="title">
1249         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
1250       </div>
1251       <div class="date">
1252         17th June 2014
1253       </div>
1254       <div class="body">
1255         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1256 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
1257 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
1258 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
1259 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
1260
1261 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
1262 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
1263 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
1264 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
1265 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
1266 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
1267 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
1268 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
1269 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
1270 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
1271 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
1272 goals.</p>
1273
1274 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
1275 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
1276 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
1277 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
1278 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
1279 chapters together into one large web page (aka
1280 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
1281 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
1282 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
1283 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
1284 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
1285 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
1286 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
1287 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
1288 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
1289 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
1290 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
1291 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
1292 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
1293 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
1294 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
1295 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
1296 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
1297 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
1298
1299 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
1300 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
1301 track the English original.  For this we use the
1302 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
1303 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
1304 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
1305 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
1306 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
1307 files), which the translations update with the native language
1308 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
1309 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
1310 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
1311 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
1312 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
1313 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
1314 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
1315 of the documentation.</p>
1316
1317 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
1318 recommend using
1319 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
1320 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
1321 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
1322 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
1323 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
1324 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
1325 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
1326 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
1327
1328 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
1329 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
1330 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
1331 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
1332 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
1333 translated images by storing translated versions in
1334 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
1335 package maintainers know more.</p>
1336
1337 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
1338 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
1339 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
1340 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
1341 PDF version</a> or the
1342 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
1343 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
1344 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
1345
1346 <p>To learn more, check out
1347 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
1348 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
1349 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
1350 manual on the wiki</a> and
1351 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
1352 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
1353
1354       </div>
1355       <div class="tags">
1356
1357
1358         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>.
1359
1360
1361       </div>
1362     </div>
1363     <div class="padding"></div>
1364
1365     <div class="entry">
1366       <div class="title">
1367         <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>
1368       </div>
1369       <div class="date">
1370         23rd April 2014
1371       </div>
1372       <div class="body">
1373         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
1374 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
1375 So I implemented one, using
1376 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
1377 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
1378 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
1379 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
1380 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
1381 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
1382
1383 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
1384 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
1385 packages to install.  The first part is in
1386 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
1387 this:</p>
1388
1389 <p><blockquote><pre>
1390 Task: isenkram
1391 Section: hardware
1392 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1393  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1394  proposed.
1395 Test-new-install: mark show
1396 Relevance: 8
1397 Packages: for-current-hardware
1398 </pre></blockquote></p>
1399
1400 <p>The second part is in
1401 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
1402 this:</p>
1403
1404 <p><blockquote><pre>
1405 #!/bin/sh
1406 #
1407 (
1408     isenkram-lookup
1409     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1410 ) | sort -u
1411 </pre></blockquote></p>
1412
1413 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
1414 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
1415 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
1416 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
1417 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
1418 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
1419
1420 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
1421 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
1422 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
1423 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
1424 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
1425 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
1426 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
1427 the python-apt code (bug
1428 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
1429 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
1430 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
1431 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
1432 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
1433 unstable today.</p>
1434
1435 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
1436 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
1437 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
1438 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
1439 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
1440 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
1441 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
1442 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
1443 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
1444
1445 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
1446 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
1447 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
1448 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
1449 package.  See also
1450 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
1451 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
1452 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
1453 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
1454
1455       </div>
1456       <div class="tags">
1457
1458
1459         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>.
1460
1461
1462       </div>
1463     </div>
1464     <div class="padding"></div>
1465
1466     <div class="entry">
1467       <div class="title">
1468         <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>
1469       </div>
1470       <div class="date">
1471         15th April 2014
1472       </div>
1473       <div class="body">
1474         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
1475 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
1476 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
1477 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
1478 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
1479 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
1480
1481 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
1482 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
1483 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
1484 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
1485 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
1486 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
1487 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
1488
1489 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
1490 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
1491 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
1492 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
1493 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
1494 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
1495 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
1496 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
1497 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
1498 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
1499 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
1500 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
1501
1502 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
1503 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
1504 become root:</p>
1505
1506 <p><pre>
1507 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1508   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1509   u-boot-tools
1510 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1511   freedom-maker
1512 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1513 </pre></p>
1514
1515 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1516 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
1517 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
1518 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
1519 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
1520 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
1521 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
1522 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
1523
1524 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1525 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1526 the preseed values:</p>
1527
1528 <p><pre>
1529 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
1530 </pre></p>
1531
1532 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
1533 it still work.</p>
1534
1535 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
1536 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
1537 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
1538 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
1539 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
1540 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
1541 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
1542
1543 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1544 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1545 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
1546 irc.debian.org)</a> and
1547 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1548 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1549
1550       </div>
1551       <div class="tags">
1552
1553
1554         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>.
1555
1556
1557       </div>
1558     </div>
1559     <div class="padding"></div>
1560
1561     <div class="entry">
1562       <div class="title">
1563         <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>
1564       </div>
1565       <div class="date">
1566          9th April 2014
1567       </div>
1568       <div class="body">
1569         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
1570 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
1571 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
1572 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
1573 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
1574 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
1575 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
1576 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
1577 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
1578 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
1579 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
1580 have looked at a system called
1581 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
1582 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
1583
1584 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
1585 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
1586 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
1587 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
1588 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
1589 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
1590 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
1591 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
1592 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
1593 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
1594 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
1595 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
1596 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
1597
1598 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
1599 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
1600 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
1601 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
1602 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
1603 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
1604 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
1605 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
1606 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
1607 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
1608 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
1609 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
1610 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
1611 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
1612 account.</p>
1613
1614 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
1615 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
1616 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
1617 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
1618 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
1619 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
1620 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
1621
1622 <p><blockquote><pre>
1623 [s3c]
1624 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1625 backend-login: API-login
1626 backend-password: API-password
1627 fs-passphrase: local-password
1628 </pre></blockquote></p>
1629
1630 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
1631 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
1632 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
1633 details and password to create it:</p>
1634
1635 <p><blockquote><pre>
1636 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
1637 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1638   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1639 Enter backend login:
1640 Enter backend password:
1641 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
1642 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
1643 Enter encryption password:
1644 Confirm encryption password:
1645 Generating random encryption key...
1646 Creating metadata tables...
1647 Dumping metadata...
1648 ..objects..
1649 ..blocks..
1650 ..inodes..
1651 ..inode_blocks..
1652 ..symlink_targets..
1653 ..names..
1654 ..contents..
1655 ..ext_attributes..
1656 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1657 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
1658 # </pre></blockquote></p>
1659
1660 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
1661
1662 <p><blockquote><pre>
1663 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1664   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1665 Using 4 upload threads.
1666 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
1667 Reading metadata...
1668 ..objects..
1669 ..blocks..
1670 ..inodes..
1671 ..inode_blocks..
1672 ..symlink_targets..
1673 ..names..
1674 ..contents..
1675 ..ext_attributes..
1676 Mounting filesystem...
1677 # df -h /s3ql
1678 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
1679 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
1680 #
1681 </pre></blockquote></p>
1682
1683 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
1684 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
1685 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
1686 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
1687 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
1688 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
1689
1690 <p><blockquote><pre>
1691 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
1692 #
1693 </pre></blockquote></p>
1694
1695 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
1696 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
1697 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
1698 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
1699 file system:</p>
1700
1701 <p><blockquote><pre>
1702 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
1703 Using cached metadata.
1704 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
1705 Checking DB integrity...
1706 Creating temporary extra indices...
1707 Checking lost+found...
1708 Checking cached objects...
1709 Checking names (refcounts)...
1710 Checking contents (names)...
1711 Checking contents (inodes)...
1712 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
1713 Checking objects (reference counts)...
1714 Checking objects (backend)...
1715 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
1716 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
1717 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
1718 Checking objects (sizes)...
1719 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
1720 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
1721 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
1722 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
1723 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
1724 Checking inodes (sizes)...
1725 Checking extended attributes (names)...
1726 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
1727 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
1728 Checking directory reachability...
1729 Checking unix conventions...
1730 Checking referential integrity...
1731 Dropping temporary indices...
1732 Backing up old metadata...
1733 Dumping metadata...
1734 ..objects..
1735 ..blocks..
1736 ..inodes..
1737 ..inode_blocks..
1738 ..symlink_targets..
1739 ..names..
1740 ..contents..
1741 ..ext_attributes..
1742 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1743 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
1744 #
1745 </pre></blockquote></p>
1746
1747 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
1748 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
1749 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
1750 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
1751 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
1752 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
1753 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
1754 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
1755 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
1756 working set.</p>
1757
1758 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
1759 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
1760 busy:</p>
1761
1762 <p><blockquote><pre>
1763 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1764   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
1765 Using 8 upload threads.
1766 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
1767 #
1768 </pre></blockquote></p>
1769
1770 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
1771 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
1772 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
1773 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
1774 s3qlctrl:
1775
1776 <p><blockquote><pre>
1777 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
1778 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
1779 #
1780 </pre></blockquote></p>
1781
1782 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
1783 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
1784 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
1785 a report:</p>
1786
1787 <p><blockquote><pre>
1788 # s3qlstat /s3ql
1789 Directory entries:    9141
1790 Inodes:               9143
1791 Data blocks:          8851
1792 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
1793 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
1794 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
1795 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
1796 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
1797 #
1798 </pre></blockquote></p>
1799
1800 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
1801 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
1802 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
1803 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
1804 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
1805 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
1806 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
1807 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
1808 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
1809 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
1810 best.</p>
1811
1812 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
1813 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
1814 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
1815 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
1816 poster is titled
1817 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
1818 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
1819 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
1820 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
1821 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
1822
1823 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
1824 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
1825 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
1826 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
1827 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
1828 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
1829 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
1830 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
1831
1832 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
1833 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
1834 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
1835 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
1836 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
1837 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
1838 only read from it.</p>
1839
1840 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1841 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1842 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1843
1844       </div>
1845       <div class="tags">
1846
1847
1848         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>.
1849
1850
1851       </div>
1852     </div>
1853     <div class="padding"></div>
1854
1855     <div class="entry">
1856       <div class="title">
1857         <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>
1858       </div>
1859       <div class="date">
1860         14th March 2014
1861       </div>
1862       <div class="body">
1863         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
1864 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
1865 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
1866 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
1867 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
1868 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
1869 release (0.2).</p>
1870
1871 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
1872 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
1873 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
1874 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
1875 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
1876 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
1877 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
1878 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
1879 and build using
1880 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
1881 with a user with sudo access to become root:
1882
1883 <pre>
1884 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1885   freedom-maker
1886 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1887   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1888   u-boot-tools
1889 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1890 </pre>
1891
1892 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1893 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
1894 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
1895 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
1896 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
1897 kpartx call.</p>
1898
1899 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1900 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1901 the preseed values:</p>
1902
1903 <pre>
1904 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
1905 </pre>
1906
1907 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
1908 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
1909 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
1910 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
1911 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
1912 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
1913
1914 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1915 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1916 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
1917 irc.debian.org)</a> and
1918 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1919 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
1920
1921       </div>
1922       <div class="tags">
1923
1924
1925         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>.
1926
1927
1928       </div>
1929     </div>
1930     <div class="padding"></div>
1931
1932     <div class="entry">
1933       <div class="title">
1934         <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>
1935       </div>
1936       <div class="date">
1937         22nd February 2014
1938       </div>
1939       <div class="body">
1940         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
1941 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
1942 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
1943 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
1944 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
1945 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
1946 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
1947 proper home since then.</p>
1948
1949 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
1950 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
1951 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
1952 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
1953 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
1954
1955 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
1956 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
1957 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
1958 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
1959 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
1960 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
1961 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
1962 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
1963 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
1964
1965       </div>
1966       <div class="tags">
1967
1968
1969         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>.
1970
1971
1972       </div>
1973     </div>
1974     <div class="padding"></div>
1975
1976     <div class="entry">
1977       <div class="title">
1978         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
1979       </div>
1980       <div class="date">
1981          3rd February 2014
1982       </div>
1983       <div class="body">
1984         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
1985 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
1986 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
1987 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
1988 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
1989 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
1990 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
1991 <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>,
1992 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
1993
1994 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
1995 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
1996 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
1997 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
1998 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
1999 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
2000
2001 <p><blockquote><pre>
2002 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
2003 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
2004 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
2005 dhclient /dev/eth0
2006 </pre></blockquote></p>
2007
2008 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
2009 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
2010 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
2011
2012 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
2013 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
2014 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
2015 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
2016 side.</p>
2017
2018 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
2019 stuff:</p>
2020
2021 <p><blockquote><pre>
2022 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2023 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
2024 EOF
2025 apt-get update
2026 apt-get dist-upgrade
2027 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
2028     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
2029 update-alternatives --config runsystem
2030 </pre></blockquote></p>
2031
2032 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
2033 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
2034 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
2035 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
2036 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
2037 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
2038 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
2039 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
2040 ssh instead.
2041
2042 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
2043 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
2044 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
2045 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
2046 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
2047 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
2048
2049 <p><blockquote><pre>
2050 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2051 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
2052 EOF
2053 </pre></blockquote></p>
2054
2055 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
2056 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
2057 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
2058 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
2059
2060 <p><blockquote><pre>
2061 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
2062 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
2063 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
2064 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
2065 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
2066 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
2067 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
2068 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
2069 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
2070 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
2071 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
2072 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
2073 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
2074 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
2075 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
2076 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
2077 #
2078 </pre></blockquote></p>
2079
2080 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
2081 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
2082 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
2083 command line stuff.<p>
2084
2085       </div>
2086       <div class="tags">
2087
2088
2089         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>.
2090
2091
2092       </div>
2093     </div>
2094     <div class="padding"></div>
2095
2096     <div class="entry">
2097       <div class="title">
2098         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
2099       </div>
2100       <div class="date">
2101         14th January 2014
2102       </div>
2103       <div class="body">
2104         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
2105 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
2106 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
2107 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
2108 the source.  The company behind it provide
2109 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
2110 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
2111 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
2112 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
2113 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
2114 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
2115 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
2116 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
2117 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
2118 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
2119 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
2120 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
2121 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
2122 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
2123 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
2124 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
2125 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
2126 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
2127 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
2128
2129 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
2130
2131 <ul>
2132
2133   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
2134   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
2135   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
2136
2137 </ul>
2138
2139 <p>You can
2140 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2141 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2142 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2143 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2144 include a test suite check.</p>
2145
2146       </div>
2147       <div class="tags">
2148
2149
2150         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>.
2151
2152
2153       </div>
2154     </div>
2155     <div class="padding"></div>
2156
2157     <div class="entry">
2158       <div class="title">
2159         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
2160       </div>
2161       <div class="date">
2162         24th November 2013
2163       </div>
2164       <div class="body">
2165         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
2166 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
2167 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
2168 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
2169 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
2170 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
2171 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
2172 is working on.  I checked the
2173 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
2174 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
2175 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
2176 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
2177 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
2178 These are the release notes:</p>
2179
2180 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
2181
2182 <ul>
2183
2184   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
2185    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
2186    up.</li>
2187
2188   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
2189
2190   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
2191    Matthias Klose.</li>
2192
2193   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
2194    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
2195
2196   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
2197    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
2198    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
2199
2200 </ul>
2201
2202 <p>You can
2203 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2204 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2205 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2206 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2207 include a testsuite check.</p>
2208
2209       </div>
2210       <div class="tags">
2211
2212
2213         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>.
2214
2215
2216       </div>
2217     </div>
2218     <div class="padding"></div>
2219
2220     <div class="entry">
2221       <div class="title">
2222         <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>
2223       </div>
2224       <div class="date">
2225          2nd November 2013
2226       </div>
2227       <div class="body">
2228         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
2229 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
2230 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
2231 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
2232 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
2233
2234 <p><pre>
2235 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
2236 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
2237 # Provides:          rsyslog
2238 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
2239 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
2240 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
2241 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
2242 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
2243 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
2244 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
2245 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
2246 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
2247 ### END INIT INFO
2248 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
2249 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
2250 </pre></p>
2251
2252 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
2253 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
2254 info/comments.</p>
2255
2256 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
2257 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
2258
2259 <p><pre>
2260 #!/bin/sh
2261
2262 # Define LSB log_* functions.
2263 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
2264 # and status_of_proc is working.
2265 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
2266
2267 #
2268 # Function that starts the daemon/service
2269
2270 #
2271 do_start()
2272 {
2273         # Return
2274         #   0 if daemon has been started
2275         #   1 if daemon was already running
2276         #   2 if daemon could not be started
2277         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
2278                 || return 1
2279         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
2280                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
2281                 || return 2
2282         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
2283         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
2284         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
2285 }
2286
2287 #
2288 # Function that stops the daemon/service
2289 #
2290 do_stop()
2291 {
2292         # Return
2293         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
2294         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
2295         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
2296         #   other if a failure occurred
2297         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2298         RETVAL="$?"
2299         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
2300         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
2301         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
2302         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
2303         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
2304         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
2305         # sleep for some time.
2306         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
2307         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
2308         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
2309         rm -f $PIDFILE
2310         return "$RETVAL"
2311 }
2312
2313 #
2314 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
2315 #
2316 do_reload() {
2317         #
2318         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
2319         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
2320         # then implement that here.
2321         #
2322         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2323         return 0
2324 }
2325
2326 SCRIPTNAME=$1
2327 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
2328 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
2329 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
2330     script="$1"
2331     shift
2332     . $script
2333 else
2334     exit 0
2335 fi
2336
2337 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
2338 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
2339
2340 # Exit if the package is not installed
2341 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
2342
2343 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
2344 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
2345
2346 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
2347 . /lib/init/vars.sh
2348
2349 case "$1" in
2350   start)
2351         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
2352         do_start
2353         case "$?" in
2354                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
2355                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
2356         esac
2357         ;;
2358   stop)
2359         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
2360         do_stop
2361         case "$?" in
2362                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
2363                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
2364         esac
2365         ;;
2366   status)
2367         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
2368         ;;
2369   #reload|force-reload)
2370         #
2371         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
2372         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
2373         #
2374         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
2375         #do_reload
2376         #log_end_msg $?
2377         #;;
2378   restart|force-reload)
2379         #
2380         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
2381         # 'force-reload' alias
2382         #
2383         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
2384         do_stop
2385         case "$?" in
2386           0|1)
2387                 do_start
2388                 case "$?" in
2389                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
2390                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
2391                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
2392                 esac
2393                 ;;
2394           *)
2395                 # Failed to stop
2396                 log_end_msg 1
2397                 ;;
2398         esac
2399         ;;
2400   *)
2401         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
2402         exit 3
2403         ;;
2404 esac
2405
2406 :
2407 </pre></p>
2408
2409 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
2410 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
2411 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
2412 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
2413
2414 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
2415 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
2416 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
2417 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
2418 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
2419
2420       </div>
2421       <div class="tags">
2422
2423
2424         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>.
2425
2426
2427       </div>
2428     </div>
2429     <div class="padding"></div>
2430
2431     <div class="entry">
2432       <div class="title">
2433         <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>
2434       </div>
2435       <div class="date">
2436          1st November 2013
2437       </div>
2438       <div class="body">
2439         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
2440 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
2441 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
2442 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
2443 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
2444 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
2445 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
2446 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
2447 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
2448 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
2449 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
2450 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
2451
2452 <p>The source is now available from
2453 <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>
2454
2455       </div>
2456       <div class="tags">
2457
2458
2459         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>.
2460
2461
2462       </div>
2463     </div>
2464     <div class="padding"></div>
2465
2466     <div class="entry">
2467       <div class="title">
2468         <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>
2469       </div>
2470       <div class="date">
2471         27th October 2013
2472       </div>
2473       <div class="body">
2474         <p>The
2475 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
2476 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
2477 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
2478 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
2479 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
2480 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
2481 of a plan to simplify the build system for
2482 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
2483 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
2484 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
2485 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
2486 Raspberry Pi.</p>
2487
2488 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
2489 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
2490 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
2491 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
2492 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
2493 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
2494 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
2495 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
2496 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
2497 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
2498 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
2499 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
2500 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
2501 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
2502 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
2503 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
2504 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
2505 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
2506 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
2507 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
2508 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
2509 available from
2510 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
2511 upstream project page</a>.</p>
2512
2513 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
2514 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
2515 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
2516 list:</p>
2517
2518 <p><pre>
2519 #!/bin/sh
2520 set -e # Exit on first error
2521 rootdir="$1"
2522 cd "$rootdir"
2523 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
2524 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
2525 EOF
2526 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
2527 # install a kernel somewhere too.
2528 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
2529     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
2530 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
2531 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
2532 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
2533 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
2534 </pre></p>
2535
2536 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
2537 to build the image:</p>
2538
2539 <pre>
2540 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
2541     --variant minbase \
2542     --arch armel \
2543     --distribution jessie \
2544     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
2545     --image test.img \
2546     --size 600M \
2547     --bootsize 64M \
2548     --boottype vfat \
2549     --log-level debug \
2550     --verbose \
2551     --no-kernel \
2552     --no-extlinux \
2553     --root-password raspberry \
2554     --hostname raspberrypi \
2555     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
2556     --customize `pwd`/customize \
2557     --package netbase \
2558     --package git-core \
2559     --package binutils \
2560     --package ca-certificates \
2561     --package wget \
2562     --package kmod
2563 </pre></p>
2564
2565 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
2566 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
2567 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
2568 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
2569 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
2570 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
2571 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
2572
2573 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
2574 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
2575 build dependency list.</p>
2576
2577 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
2578 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
2579 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
2580 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
2581
2582       </div>
2583       <div class="tags">
2584
2585
2586         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>.
2587
2588
2589       </div>
2590     </div>
2591     <div class="padding"></div>
2592
2593     <div class="entry">
2594       <div class="title">
2595         <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>
2596       </div>
2597       <div class="date">
2598         15th October 2013
2599       </div>
2600       <div class="body">
2601         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
2602 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
2603 these. :)</p>
2604
2605 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
2606 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
2607 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
2608 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
2609 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
2610 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
2611 hope you will to. :)</p>
2612
2613 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
2614 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
2615 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
2616 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
2617 donated.  Are you next?</p>
2618
2619 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
2620 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
2621 statement under the heading
2622 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
2623 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
2624 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
2625 too.</p>
2626
2627       </div>
2628       <div class="tags">
2629
2630
2631         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>.
2632
2633
2634       </div>
2635     </div>
2636     <div class="padding"></div>
2637
2638     <div class="entry">
2639       <div class="title">
2640         <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>
2641       </div>
2642       <div class="date">
2643         27th September 2013
2644       </div>
2645       <div class="body">
2646         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
2647 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
2648 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
2649 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
2650
2651 <ul>
2652
2653 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
2654 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
2655
2656 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
2657 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
2658
2659 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
2660 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
2661 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
2662 (Youtube)</li>
2663
2664 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
2665 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
2666
2667 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
2668 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
2669
2670 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
2671 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
2672 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
2673
2674 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
2675 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
2676 (Youtube)</li>
2677
2678 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
2679 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
2680
2681 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
2682 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
2683
2684 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
2685 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
2686 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
2687
2688 </ul>
2689
2690 <p>A larger list is available from
2691 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
2692 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
2693
2694 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
2695 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
2696 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
2697 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
2698 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
2699 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
2700 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
2701 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
2702 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
2703 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2704 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2705
2706       </div>
2707       <div class="tags">
2708
2709
2710         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>.
2711
2712
2713       </div>
2714     </div>
2715     <div class="padding"></div>
2716
2717     <div class="entry">
2718       <div class="title">
2719         <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>
2720       </div>
2721       <div class="date">
2722         10th September 2013
2723       </div>
2724       <div class="body">
2725         <p>I was introduced to the
2726 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
2727 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
2728 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
2729 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
2730 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
2731 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
2732 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
2733 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
2734
2735 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
2736 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
2737 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
2738 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
2739 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
2740
2741 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
2742 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
2743 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
2744 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
2745 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
2746 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
2747 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
2748 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
2749 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
2750 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
2751 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
2752 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
2753 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
2754 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
2755 missing in Debian).</p>
2756
2757 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
2758 scripts
2759 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
2760 and a administrative web interface
2761 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
2762 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
2763 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
2764 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
2765 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
2766 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
2767 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
2768 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
2769 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
2770 this is really working yet, see
2771 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
2772 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
2773 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
2774 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
2775 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
2776 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
2777 with lots of half baked features.</p>
2778
2779 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
2780 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
2781 at.</p>
2782
2783 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
2784
2785 <ol>
2786
2787 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
2788 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
2789 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
2790 to the Debian installer:<p>
2791 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
2792
2793 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
2794 install on.</li>
2795
2796 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
2797 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
2798
2799 </ol>
2800
2801 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
2802
2803 <ol>
2804
2805 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
2806 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
2807 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
2808 <pre>
2809 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
2810 </pre></li>
2811 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
2812 <pre>
2813 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
2814    apt-key add -
2815 apt-get update
2816 apt-get install freedombox-setup
2817 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
2818 </pre></li>
2819 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
2820
2821 </ol>
2822
2823 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
2824 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
2825 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
2826 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
2827 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
2828
2829 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
2830 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
2831 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
2832 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
2833
2834 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
2835 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
2836 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
2837 irc.debian.org and the
2838 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
2839 mailing list</a>.</p>
2840
2841 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
2842 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
2843 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
2844 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
2845 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
2846 default password is 'secret'.</p>
2847
2848       </div>
2849       <div class="tags">
2850
2851
2852         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>.
2853
2854
2855       </div>
2856     </div>
2857     <div class="padding"></div>
2858
2859     <div class="entry">
2860       <div class="title">
2861         <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>
2862       </div>
2863       <div class="date">
2864         18th August 2013
2865       </div>
2866       <div class="body">
2867         <p>Earlier, I reported about
2868 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
2869 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
2870 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
2871 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
2872 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
2873 currently on the disk.</p>
2874
2875 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
2876 <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>
2877 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
2878 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
2879 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
2880 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
2881 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
2882 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
2883 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
2884 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
2885 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
2886 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
2887 the broken disks.</p>
2888
2889       </div>
2890       <div class="tags">
2891
2892
2893         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>.
2894
2895
2896       </div>
2897     </div>
2898     <div class="padding"></div>
2899
2900     <div class="entry">
2901       <div class="title">
2902         <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>
2903       </div>
2904       <div class="date">
2905         17th July 2013
2906       </div>
2907       <div class="body">
2908         <p>Today I switched to
2909 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
2910 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
2911 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
2912 <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
2913 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
2914 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
2915 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
2916 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
2917 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
2918 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
2919 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
2920 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
2921 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
2922 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
2923 station from now on.</p>
2924
2925 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
2926 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
2927 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
2928 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
2929 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
2930 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
2931 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
2932 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
2933 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
2934 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
2935 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
2936 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
2937
2938 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
2939 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
2940 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
2941 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
2942 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
2943 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
2944 parameters are tuned:</p>
2945
2946 <ul>
2947
2948 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
2949     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
2950
2951 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
2952     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
2953     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
2954
2955 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
2956     systems.</li>
2957
2958 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
2959     /etc/fstab.</li>
2960
2961 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
2962
2963 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
2964     cron.daily).</li>
2965
2966 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
2967     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
2968
2969 </ul>
2970
2971 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
2972 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
2973 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
2974 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
2975 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
2976 from getting the data on the disk (see
2977 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
2978 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
2979 right thing to do.</p>
2980
2981 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
2982 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
2983 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
2984
2985 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
2986 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
2987 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
2988 instead of during my work.</p>
2989
2990 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
2991 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
2992
2993 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
2994 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
2995 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
2996
2997 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
2998 there.</p>
2999
3000 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
3001 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
3002 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
3003 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
3004 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
3005 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
3006 back.</p>
3007
3008       </div>
3009       <div class="tags">
3010
3011
3012         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>.
3013
3014
3015       </div>
3016     </div>
3017     <div class="padding"></div>
3018
3019     <div class="entry">
3020       <div class="title">
3021         <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>
3022       </div>
3023       <div class="date">
3024         10th July 2013
3025       </div>
3026       <div class="body">
3027         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
3028 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
3029 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
3030 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
3031 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
3032 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
3033 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
3034 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
3035
3036 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
3037 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
3038 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
3039 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
3040 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
3041 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
3042 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
3043 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
3044 lock up when I download a new
3045 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
3046 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
3047 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
3048
3049 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3050 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
3051 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3052 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
3053 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3054 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3055
3056 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3057 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
3058 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3059 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
3060 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3061 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3062
3063 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
3064 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
3065 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
3066 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
3067 exist).</p>
3068
3069       </div>
3070       <div class="tags">
3071
3072
3073         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>.
3074
3075
3076       </div>
3077     </div>
3078     <div class="padding"></div>
3079
3080     <div class="entry">
3081       <div class="title">
3082         <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>
3083       </div>
3084       <div class="date">
3085          9th July 2013
3086       </div>
3087       <div class="body">
3088         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
3089 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
3090 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
3091 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
3092 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3093 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
3094 Bitraf</a>.</p>
3095
3096 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
3097 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
3098 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
3099 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
3100 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
3101
3102       </div>
3103       <div class="tags">
3104
3105
3106         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>.
3107
3108
3109       </div>
3110     </div>
3111     <div class="padding"></div>
3112
3113     <div class="entry">
3114       <div class="title">
3115         <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>
3116       </div>
3117       <div class="date">
3118          5th July 2013
3119       </div>
3120       <div class="body">
3121         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
3122 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
3123 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
3124 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
3125 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
3126 ended up picking a
3127 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
3128 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
3129 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
3130 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
3131 on that below.</p>
3132
3133 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3134 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3135 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3136 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3137 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3138 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
3139 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
3140 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
3141 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
3142
3143 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
3144 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
3145 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
3146 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
3147 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
3148 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
3149 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
3150
3151 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
3152 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
3153
3154 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
3155 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
3156 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
3157 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
3158 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
3159 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
3160 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
3161 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
3162 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
3163 kernel developers as
3164 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
3165 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
3166 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
3167 Lenovo forums, both for
3168 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
3169 2012-11-10</a> and for
3170 <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
3171 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
3172 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
3173 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
3174 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
3175 There is even a
3176 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
3177 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
3178 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
3179
3180 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
3181 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
3182 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
3183 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
3184 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
3185 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
3186 fixed. :)</p>
3187
3188       </div>
3189       <div class="tags">
3190
3191
3192         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>.
3193
3194
3195       </div>
3196     </div>
3197     <div class="padding"></div>
3198
3199     <div class="entry">
3200       <div class="title">
3201         <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>
3202       </div>
3203       <div class="date">
3204          4th July 2013
3205       </div>
3206       <div class="body">
3207         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
3208 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
3209 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
3210 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
3211 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
3212 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
3213 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
3214 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
3215 with an expencive door stop.</p>
3216
3217 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3218 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3219 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3220 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3221 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3222 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
3223 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
3224
3225 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
3226 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
3227 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
3228 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
3229 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
3230 new laptop now. :)</p>
3231
3232 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
3233
3234       </div>
3235       <div class="tags">
3236
3237
3238         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3239
3240
3241       </div>
3242     </div>
3243     <div class="padding"></div>
3244
3245     <div class="entry">
3246       <div class="title">
3247         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
3248       </div>
3249       <div class="date">
3250         25th June 2013
3251       </div>
3252       <div class="body">
3253         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
3254 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
3255 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
3256 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
3257 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
3258 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
3259 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
3260 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
3261 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
3262 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
3263 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
3264
3265 <p><pre>
3266 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3267 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
3268 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
3269 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
3270 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
3271 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
3272 firmware-ipw2x00
3273 firmware-ipw2x00
3274 Preconfiguring packages ...
3275 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
3276 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
3277 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
3278 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
3279 #
3280 </pre></p>
3281
3282 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
3283 printed instead:</p>
3284
3285 <p><pre>
3286 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3287 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
3288 #
3289 </pre></p>
3290
3291 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
3292 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
3293
3294 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
3295 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
3296 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
3297 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
3298 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
3299 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
3300 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
3301 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
3302 machine.</p>
3303
3304 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
3305 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
3306 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
3307 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
3308 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
3309 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
3310
3311       </div>
3312       <div class="tags">
3313
3314
3315         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>.
3316
3317
3318       </div>
3319     </div>
3320     <div class="padding"></div>
3321
3322     <div class="entry">
3323       <div class="title">
3324         <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>
3325       </div>
3326       <div class="date">
3327         11th June 2013
3328       </div>
3329       <div class="body">
3330         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
3331 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
3332 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
3333 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
3334 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
3335 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
3336 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
3337 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
3338 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
3339 i915 driver used by the
3340 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3341 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
3342
3343 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
3344 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
3345 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
3346 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
3347 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
3348
3349 <pre>
3350 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
3351 update-initramfs -u -k all
3352 </pre>
3353
3354 <p>Since March 2012 there is
3355 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
3356 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
3357 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
3358 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
3359 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
3360 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
3361 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
3362 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
3363 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
3364 number.</p>
3365
3366 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
3367 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
3368
3369 <p><pre>
3370 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
3371     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
3372     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
3373  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
3374  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
3375     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
3376  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
3377     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
3378  Latency: 0
3379  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
3380  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
3381  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
3382  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
3383  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
3384  Capabilities: <access denied>
3385  Kernel driver in use: i915
3386 </pre></p>
3387
3388 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
3389
3390 <p><pre>
3391 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
3392        ...
3393         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
3394         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
3395        ...
3396 }
3397 </pre></p>
3398
3399 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
3400 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
3401 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
3402 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
3403 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
3404 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
3405 yet shown up in
3406 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
3407 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
3408 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
3409 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
3410 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
3411 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
3412
3413 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
3414 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
3415 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
3416 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
3417 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
3418 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
3419 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
3420 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
3421 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
3422 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
3423 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
3424 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
3425
3426 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
3427 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
3428 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
3429 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
3430 backlight.</p>
3431
3432       </div>
3433       <div class="tags">
3434
3435
3436         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>.
3437
3438
3439       </div>
3440     </div>
3441     <div class="padding"></div>
3442
3443     <div class="entry">
3444       <div class="title">
3445         <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>
3446       </div>
3447       <div class="date">
3448         27th May 2013
3449       </div>
3450       <div class="body">
3451         <p>Two days ago, I asked
3452 <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
3453 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
3454 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
3455 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
3456 and Windows 8.</p>
3457
3458 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
3459 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
3460 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
3461 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
3462 enough to tell.</p>
3463
3464 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
3465 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
3466 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
3467 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
3468 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
3469 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
3470 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
3471 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
3472 to follow.</p>
3473
3474 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
3475 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
3476 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
3477 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
3478 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
3479 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
3480 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
3481 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
3482
3483 <p>I've updated the
3484 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
3485 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
3486 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
3487 machine.</p>
3488
3489 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
3490 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
3491
3492       </div>
3493       <div class="tags">
3494
3495
3496         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>.
3497
3498
3499       </div>
3500     </div>
3501     <div class="padding"></div>
3502
3503     <div class="entry">
3504       <div class="title">
3505         <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>
3506       </div>
3507       <div class="date">
3508         25th May 2013
3509       </div>
3510       <div class="body">
3511         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
3512 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
3513 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
3514 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
3515 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
3516 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
3517
3518 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
3519 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
3520 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
3521 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
3522 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
3523 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
3524 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
3525 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
3526 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
3527 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
3528
3529 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
3530 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
3531 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
3532 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
3533 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
3534 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
3535
3536 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
3537 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
3538 on new Laptops?</p>
3539
3540       </div>
3541       <div class="tags">
3542
3543
3544         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>.
3545
3546
3547       </div>
3548     </div>
3549     <div class="padding"></div>
3550
3551     <div class="entry">
3552       <div class="title">
3553         <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>
3554       </div>
3555       <div class="date">
3556         17th May 2013
3557       </div>
3558       <div class="body">
3559         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
3560 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
3561 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
3562 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
3563 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
3564 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
3565 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
3566 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
3567 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
3568 donate some money</a>.
3569
3570 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
3571 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
3572 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
3573 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
3574 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
3575
3576 <p>The script,
3577 <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/>
3578 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
3579 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
3580 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
3581
3582 <ol>
3583
3584 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
3585 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
3586 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
3587     our configuration.</li>
3588 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
3589     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
3590     according to the profile specified in the config above,
3591     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
3592 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
3593     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
3594 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
3595
3596 </ol>
3597
3598 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
3599 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
3600 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
3601 the needed packages.</p>
3602
3603 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
3604 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
3605 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
3606 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
3607 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
3608 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
3609
3610 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
3611 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
3612 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
3613
3614 <p><pre>
3615 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
3616 DESKTOP="lxde"
3617 </pre></p>
3618
3619 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
3620 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
3621 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
3622 boot.</p>
3623
3624       </div>
3625       <div class="tags">
3626
3627
3628         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>.
3629
3630
3631       </div>
3632     </div>
3633     <div class="padding"></div>
3634
3635     <div class="entry">
3636       <div class="title">
3637         <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>
3638       </div>
3639       <div class="date">
3640         11th May 2013
3641       </div>
3642       <div class="body">
3643         <P>In January,
3644 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
3645 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
3646 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
3647 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
3648 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
3649 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
3650 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
3651 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
3652 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
3653 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
3654 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
3655 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
3656
3657 <p><table>
3658 <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>
3659 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
3660 <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>
3661 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
3662 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
3663 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
3664 <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>
3665 <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>
3666 <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>
3667 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
3668 </table></p>
3669
3670 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
3671 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
3672 available in experimental.</p>
3673
3674 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
3675 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
3676 for LEGO designers.</p>
3677
3678       </div>
3679       <div class="tags">
3680
3681
3682         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>.
3683
3684
3685       </div>
3686     </div>
3687     <div class="padding"></div>
3688
3689     <div class="entry">
3690       <div class="title">
3691         <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>
3692       </div>
3693       <div class="date">
3694          5th May 2013
3695       </div>
3696       <div class="body">
3697         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
3698 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
3699 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
3700 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
3701 soon.</p>
3702
3703 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
3704 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
3705 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
3706 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
3707 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
3708 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
3709 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
3710 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
3711 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
3712 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
3713 Edu.</a>
3714
3715 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
3716 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
3717 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
3718 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
3719 follow.<p>
3720
3721       </div>
3722       <div class="tags">
3723
3724
3725         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>.
3726
3727
3728       </div>
3729     </div>
3730     <div class="padding"></div>
3731
3732     <div class="entry">
3733       <div class="title">
3734         <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>
3735       </div>
3736       <div class="date">
3737          3rd April 2013
3738       </div>
3739       <div class="body">
3740         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
3741 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
3742 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
3743 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
3744
3745 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
3746 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
3747 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
3748 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
3749 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
3750 BTS. :)</p>
3751
3752       </div>
3753       <div class="tags">
3754
3755
3756         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>.
3757
3758
3759       </div>
3760     </div>
3761     <div class="padding"></div>
3762
3763     <div class="entry">
3764       <div class="title">
3765         <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>
3766       </div>
3767       <div class="date">
3768          2nd February 2013
3769       </div>
3770       <div class="body">
3771         <p>My
3772 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
3773 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
3774 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
3775 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
3776 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
3777 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
3778 version too.</p>
3779
3780 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
3781 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
3782 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
3783 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
3784 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
3785 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
3786 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
3787 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
3788
3789 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
3790 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
3791 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
3792 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
3793 it. :)</p>
3794
3795 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3796 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3797 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3798
3799       </div>
3800       <div class="tags">
3801
3802
3803         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>.
3804
3805
3806       </div>
3807     </div>
3808     <div class="padding"></div>
3809
3810     <div class="entry">
3811       <div class="title">
3812         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
3813       </div>
3814       <div class="date">
3815         22nd January 2013
3816       </div>
3817       <div class="body">
3818         <p>Yesterday, I
3819 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
3820 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
3821 pluggable hardware devices, which I
3822 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
3823 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
3824 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
3825 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
3826 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
3827 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
3828 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
3829 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
3830 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
3831 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
3832
3833 <pre>
3834 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
3835 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
3836 </pre>
3837
3838 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
3839 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
3840 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
3841 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
3842
3843 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
3844 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
3845 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
3846 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
3847 word.</p>
3848
3849 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
3850 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
3851 process.</p>
3852
3853 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
3854 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
3855
3856       </div>
3857       <div class="tags">
3858
3859
3860         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>.
3861
3862
3863       </div>
3864     </div>
3865     <div class="padding"></div>
3866
3867     <div class="entry">
3868       <div class="title">
3869         <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>
3870       </div>
3871       <div class="date">
3872         21st January 2013
3873       </div>
3874       <div class="body">
3875         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
3876 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
3877 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
3878 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
3879 it, fetch the
3880 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
3881 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
3882 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
3883 autostart script.</p>
3884
3885 <p>The design is simple:</p>
3886
3887 <ul>
3888
3889 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
3890 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
3891
3892 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
3893 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
3894 initially did.</li>
3895
3896 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
3897 the APT database, a database
3898 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
3899 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
3900
3901 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
3902 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
3903 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
3904 package or packages.</li>
3905
3906 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
3907 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
3908
3909 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
3910 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
3911
3912 </ul>
3913
3914 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
3915 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
3916 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
3917 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
3918
3919 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
3920 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
3921 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
3922 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
3923 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
3924
3925 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
3926 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
3927 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
3928 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
3929 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
3930 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
3931 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
3932 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
3933
3934 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
3935 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
3936 '<tt>svn checkout
3937 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
3938 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
3939 devscripts package.</p>
3940
3941 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
3942 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
3943 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
3944 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
3945 instructions</a> for details.</p>
3946
3947       </div>
3948       <div class="tags">
3949
3950
3951         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>.
3952
3953
3954       </div>
3955     </div>
3956     <div class="padding"></div>
3957
3958     <div class="entry">
3959       <div class="title">
3960         <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>
3961       </div>
3962       <div class="date">
3963         19th January 2013
3964       </div>
3965       <div class="body">
3966         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
3967 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
3968 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
3969 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
3970 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
3971 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
3972 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
3973 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
3974 not a durable solution.
3975
3976 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
3977 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
3978
3979 <ul>
3980
3981 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
3982   than A4).</li>
3983 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
3984 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
3985 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
3986 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
3987 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
3988 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
3989 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
3990 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
3991 size).</li>
3992 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
3993   X.org packages.</li>
3994 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
3995   the time).
3996
3997 </ul>
3998
3999 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
4000 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
4001 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
4002 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
4003 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
4004 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
4005 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
4006 still be useful.</p>
4007
4008 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
4009 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
4010 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
4011 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
4012 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
4013 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
4014
4015       </div>
4016       <div class="tags">
4017
4018
4019         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>.
4020
4021
4022       </div>
4023     </div>
4024     <div class="padding"></div>
4025
4026     <div class="entry">
4027       <div class="title">
4028         <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>
4029       </div>
4030       <div class="date">
4031         18th January 2013
4032       </div>
4033       <div class="body">
4034         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
4035 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
4036 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
4037 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
4038 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
4039 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
4040 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
4041
4042 <pre>
4043 #!/usr/bin/python
4044 import sys
4045 import apt
4046 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4047     cache = apt.Cache()
4048     cache.open(None)
4049     thepkgs = []
4050     for pkg in cache:
4051         version = pkg.candidate
4052         if version is None:
4053             version = pkg.installed
4054         if version is None:
4055             continue
4056         record = version.record
4057         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
4058             continue
4059         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
4060         for t in mime_types:
4061             t = t.rstrip().strip()
4062             if t == mimetype:
4063                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
4064     return thepkgs
4065 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
4066 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
4067     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
4068 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
4069 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4070     print "  %s" %pkg
4071 </pre>
4072
4073 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
4074
4075 <pre>
4076 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
4077 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
4078   gecko-mediaplayer
4079 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
4080 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
4081   browser-plugin-gnash
4082 %
4083 </pre>
4084
4085 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
4086 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
4087 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
4088 anyone working on adding it?</p>
4089
4090 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
4091 request for icweasel support for this feature is
4092 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
4093 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
4094 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
4095 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
4096
4097       </div>
4098       <div class="tags">
4099
4100
4101         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>.
4102
4103
4104       </div>
4105     </div>
4106     <div class="padding"></div>
4107
4108     <div class="entry">
4109       <div class="title">
4110         <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>
4111       </div>
4112       <div class="date">
4113         16th January 2013
4114       </div>
4115       <div class="body">
4116         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
4117 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
4118 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
4119 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
4120 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
4121 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
4122 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
4123 downloaded by the browser.</p>
4124
4125 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
4126 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
4127 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
4128 can be found on the
4129 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
4130 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
4131 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
4132 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
4133 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
4134
4135 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
4136
4137 <pre>
4138   count MIME type
4139   ----- -----------------------
4140      32 text/plain
4141      30 audio/mpeg
4142      29 image/png
4143      28 image/jpeg
4144      27 application/ogg
4145      26 audio/x-mp3
4146      25 image/tiff
4147      25 image/gif
4148      22 image/bmp
4149      22 audio/x-wav
4150      20 audio/x-flac
4151      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4152      18 video/x-ms-asf
4153      18 audio/x-musepack
4154      18 audio/x-mpeg
4155      18 application/x-ogg
4156      17 video/mpeg
4157      17 audio/x-scpls
4158      17 audio/ogg
4159      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4160 </pre>
4161
4162 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
4163
4164 <pre>
4165   count MIME type
4166   ----- -----------------------
4167      33 text/plain
4168      32 image/png
4169      32 image/jpeg
4170      29 audio/mpeg
4171      27 image/gif
4172      26 image/tiff
4173      26 application/ogg
4174      25 audio/x-mp3
4175      22 image/bmp
4176      21 audio/x-wav
4177      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4178      19 audio/x-mpeg
4179      18 video/mpeg
4180      18 audio/x-scpls
4181      18 audio/x-flac
4182      18 application/x-ogg
4183      17 video/x-ms-asf
4184      17 text/html
4185      17 audio/x-musepack
4186      16 image/x-xbitmap
4187 </pre>
4188
4189 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
4190
4191 <pre>
4192   count MIME type
4193   ----- -----------------------
4194      31 text/plain
4195      31 image/png
4196      31 image/jpeg
4197      29 audio/mpeg
4198      28 application/ogg
4199      27 image/gif
4200      26 image/tiff
4201      26 audio/x-mp3
4202      23 audio/x-wav
4203      22 image/bmp
4204      21 audio/x-flac
4205      20 audio/x-mpegurl
4206      19 audio/x-mpeg
4207      18 video/x-ms-asf
4208      18 video/mpeg
4209      18 audio/x-scpls
4210      18 application/x-ogg
4211      17 audio/x-musepack
4212      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4213      16 video/x-msvideo
4214 </pre>
4215
4216 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
4217 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
4218 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
4219 issues.</p>
4220
4221 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
4222 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
4223
4224       </div>
4225       <div class="tags">
4226
4227
4228         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>.
4229
4230
4231       </div>
4232     </div>
4233     <div class="padding"></div>
4234
4235     <div class="entry">
4236       <div class="title">
4237         <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>
4238       </div>
4239       <div class="date">
4240         15th January 2013
4241       </div>
4242       <div class="body">
4243         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
4244 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
4245 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
4246 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
4247 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
4248 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
4249 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
4250 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
4251 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
4252 packages.</p>
4253
4254 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
4255 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
4256 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
4257 modalias.</p>
4258
4259 <p><blockquote>
4260 Package: package-name
4261 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
4262 </blockquote></p>
4263
4264 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
4265 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
4266
4267 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
4268 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
4269
4270 <p><blockquote>
4271 Package: cheese
4272 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
4273 </blockquote></p>
4274
4275 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
4276 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
4277
4278 <p><blockquote>
4279 Package: pcmciautils
4280 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
4281 </blockquote></p>
4282
4283 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
4284 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
4285
4286 <p><blockquote>
4287 Package: colorhug-client
4288 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
4289 </blockquote></p>
4290
4291 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
4292 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
4293 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
4294
4295 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
4296 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
4297 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
4298 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
4299 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
4300 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
4301 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
4302 Raring.</p>
4303
4304 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
4305 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
4306 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
4307 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
4308 try the
4309 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
4310 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
4311 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
4312 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
4313
4314 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
4315 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
4316
4317 <p><blockquote>
4318 % ./hw-support-lookup
4319 <br>yubikey-personalization
4320 <br>%
4321 </blockquote></p>
4322
4323 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
4324 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
4325
4326 <p><blockquote>
4327 % ./hw-support-lookup
4328 <br>pcmciautils
4329 <br>%
4330 </blockquote></p>
4331
4332 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
4333 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
4334 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
4335
4336 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
4337 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
4338 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
4339 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
4340 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
4341 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
4342 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
4343 see if it work.</p>
4344
4345 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4346 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4347 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4348 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
4349
4350       </div>
4351       <div class="tags">
4352
4353
4354         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>.
4355
4356
4357       </div>
4358     </div>
4359     <div class="padding"></div>
4360
4361     <div class="entry">
4362       <div class="title">
4363         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">Modalias strings - a practical way to map "stuff" to hardware</a>
4364       </div>
4365       <div class="date">
4366         14th January 2013
4367       </div>
4368       <div class="body">
4369         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
4370 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
4371 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
4372 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
4373 in
4374 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
4375 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
4376
4377 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
4378
4379 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
4380 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
4381 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
4382 &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;,
4383 &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
4384 &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;.
4385
4386 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
4387 this shell script:</p>
4388
4389 <pre>
4390 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
4391 </pre>
4392
4393 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
4394 using modinfo:</p>
4395
4396 <pre>
4397 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
4398 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
4399 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
4400 %
4401 </pre>
4402
4403 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
4404
4405 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
4406 Bridge memory controller:</p>
4407
4408 <p><blockquote>
4409 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
4410 </blockquote></p>
4411
4412 <p>This represent these values:</p>
4413
4414 <pre>
4415  v   00008086  (vendor)
4416  d   00002770  (device)
4417  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
4418  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
4419  bc  06        (bus class)
4420  sc  00        (bus subclass)
4421  i   00        (interface)
4422 </pre>
4423
4424 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
4425 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
4426 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
4427 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
4428
4429 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
4430 means.</p>
4431
4432 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
4433
4434 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
4435 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
4436
4437 <p><blockquote>
4438 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
4439 </blockquote></p>
4440
4441 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
4442
4443 <pre>
4444  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
4445  p    0001  (device product)
4446  d    0206  (bcddevice)
4447  dc     09  (device class)
4448  dsc    00  (device subclass)
4449  dp     00  (device protocol)
4450  ic     09  (interface class)
4451  isc    00  (interface subclass)
4452  ip     00  (interface protocol)
4453 </pre>
4454
4455 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
4456 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
4457 these alias entries show up:</p>
4458
4459 <p><blockquote>
4460 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
4461 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
4462 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
4463 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
4464 </blockquote></p>
4465
4466 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
4467 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
4468 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
4469
4470 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
4471
4472 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
4473 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
4474
4475 <p><blockquote>
4476 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4477 </blockquote></p>
4478
4479 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
4480
4481 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
4482
4483 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
4484 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
4485 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
4486
4487 <p><blockquote>
4488 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
4489 </blockquote></p>
4490
4491 <p>The values present are</p>
4492
4493 <pre>
4494  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
4495  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
4496  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
4497  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
4498  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
4499  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
4500  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
4501  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
4502  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
4503  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
4504  ct   10             (chassis type)
4505  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
4506 </pre>
4507
4508 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
4509 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
4510
4511 <pre>
4512   3 Desktop
4513   4 Low Profile Desktop
4514   5 Pizza Box
4515   6 Mini Tower
4516   7 Tower
4517   8 Portable
4518   9 Laptop
4519  10 Notebook
4520  11 Hand Held
4521  12 Docking Station
4522  13 All In One
4523  14 Sub Notebook
4524  15 Space-saving
4525  16 Lunch Box
4526  17 Main Server Chassis
4527  18 Expansion Chassis
4528  19 Sub Chassis
4529  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
4530  21 Peripheral Chassis
4531  22 RAID Chassis
4532  23 Rack Mount Chassis
4533  24 Sealed-case PC
4534  25 Multi-system
4535  26 CompactPCI
4536  27 AdvancedTCA
4537  28 Blade
4538  29 Blade Enclosing
4539 </pre>
4540
4541 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
4542 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
4543 claim it is a desktop.</p>
4544
4545 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
4546
4547 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
4548 test machine:</p>
4549
4550 <p><blockquote>
4551 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
4552 </blockquote></p>
4553
4554 <p>The values present are</p>
4555
4556 <pre>
4557   ty  01  (type)
4558   pr  00  (prototype)
4559   id  00  (id)
4560   ex  00  (extra)
4561 </pre>
4562
4563 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
4564 the valid values are.</p>
4565
4566 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
4567
4568 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
4569 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
4570 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
4571 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
4572 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
4573 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
4574 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
4575
4576 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
4577
4578 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
4579 one can use the following shell script:</p>
4580
4581 <pre>
4582   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
4583     echo "$id" ; \
4584     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
4585   done
4586 </pre>
4587
4588 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
4589 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
4590
4591 <pre>
4592   acpi:ACPI0003:
4593     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
4594   acpi:device:
4595   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
4596   acpi:IBM0068:
4597     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
4598     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
4599     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
4600     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
4601   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4602     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
4603     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
4604     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
4605   [...]
4606 </pre>
4607
4608 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4609 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4610 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4611 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
4612
4613 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
4614 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
4615 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
4616
4617       </div>
4618       <div class="tags">
4619
4620
4621         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>.
4622
4623
4624       </div>
4625     </div>
4626     <div class="padding"></div>
4627
4628     <div class="entry">
4629       <div class="title">
4630         <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>
4631       </div>
4632       <div class="date">
4633         10th January 2013
4634       </div>
4635       <div class="body">
4636         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
4637 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
4638 Launcher and updated the Debian package
4639 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
4640 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
4641 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
4642 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
4643 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
4644 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
4645 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
4646 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
4647 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
4648 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
4649 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
4650 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
4651 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
4652 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
4653 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
4654
4655       </div>
4656       <div class="tags">
4657
4658
4659         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>.
4660
4661
4662       </div>
4663     </div>
4664     <div class="padding"></div>
4665
4666     <div class="entry">
4667       <div class="title">
4668         <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>
4669       </div>
4670       <div class="date">
4671          9th January 2013
4672       </div>
4673       <div class="body">
4674         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
4675 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
4676 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
4677 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
4678 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
4679 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
4680 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
4681 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
4682 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
4683 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
4684 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
4685
4686 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
4687 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
4688 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
4689 simple:
4690
4691 <ul>
4692
4693 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
4694   starting when a user log in.</li>
4695
4696 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
4697   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
4698
4699 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
4700   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
4701   packages.</li>
4702
4703 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
4704   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
4705
4706 </ul>
4707
4708 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
4709 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
4710 discover database to find packages and
4711 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
4712 packages.</p>
4713
4714 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
4715 draft package is now checked into
4716 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
4717 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
4718 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
4719 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
4720 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
4721 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
4722 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
4723 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
4724 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
4725 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
4726 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
4727 because of the freeze).</p>
4728
4729 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
4730 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
4731 inserted):</p>
4732
4733 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
4734
4735 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
4736 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
4737 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
4738
4739 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
4740 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
4741 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
4742 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
4743 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
4744 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
4745 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
4746
4747 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
4748 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
4749 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
4750 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
4751 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
4752 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
4753 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
4754 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
4755 not be installed?</p>
4756
4757 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
4758 please send me an email. :)</p>
4759
4760       </div>
4761       <div class="tags">
4762
4763
4764         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>.
4765
4766
4767       </div>
4768     </div>
4769     <div class="padding"></div>
4770
4771     <div class="entry">
4772       <div class="title">
4773         <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>
4774       </div>
4775       <div class="date">
4776          2nd January 2013
4777       </div>
4778       <div class="body">
4779         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
4780 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
4781 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
4782 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
4783 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
4784 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
4785 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
4786 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
4787 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
4788 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
4789
4790 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
4791 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
4792 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
4793
4794       </div>
4795       <div class="tags">
4796
4797
4798         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>.
4799
4800
4801       </div>
4802     </div>
4803     <div class="padding"></div>
4804
4805     <div class="entry">
4806       <div class="title">
4807         <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>
4808       </div>
4809       <div class="date">
4810         25th December 2012
4811       </div>
4812       <div class="body">
4813         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
4814 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
4815
4816 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
4817 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
4818 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
4819 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
4820 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
4821 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
4822 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
4823 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
4824 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
4825 name.</p>
4826
4827 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
4828 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
4829 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
4830
4831 <blockquote><pre>
4832 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
4833 cd bitcoin
4834 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
4835 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
4836 </pre></blockquote>
4837
4838 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
4839 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
4840 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
4841 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
4842 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
4843 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
4844 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
4845 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
4846 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
4847
4848 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4849 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4850 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4851
4852       </div>
4853       <div class="tags">
4854
4855
4856         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>.
4857
4858
4859       </div>
4860     </div>
4861     <div class="padding"></div>
4862
4863     <div class="entry">
4864       <div class="title">
4865         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
4866       </div>
4867       <div class="date">
4868         21st December 2012
4869       </div>
4870       <div class="body">
4871         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
4872 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
4873 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
4874 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
4875 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
4876 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
4877 is now maintained by a
4878 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
4879 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
4880 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
4881 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
4882 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
4883 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
4884 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
4885 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
4886 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
4887 Corallo in a
4888 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
4889 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
4890 Debian package.</p>
4891
4892 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
4893 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
4894 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
4895 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
4896 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
4897 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
4898 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
4899 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
4900 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
4901 new version to unstable.
4902
4903 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
4904 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
4905 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
4906 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
4907 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
4908 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
4909 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
4910 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
4911 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
4912 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
4913 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
4914 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
4915 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
4916 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
4917 have not tested them.</p>
4918
4919 <p>My
4920 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
4921 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
4922 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
4923 years ago, as can be
4924 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
4925 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
4926 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
4927 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
4928 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
4929 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
4930 the same address as last time,
4931 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4932
4933       </div>
4934       <div class="tags">
4935
4936
4937         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>.
4938
4939
4940       </div>
4941     </div>
4942     <div class="padding"></div>
4943
4944     <div class="entry">
4945       <div class="title">
4946         <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>
4947       </div>
4948       <div class="date">
4949          7th September 2012
4950       </div>
4951       <div class="body">
4952         <p>As I
4953 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
4954 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
4955 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
4956 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
4957 repository for the project</a>.</p>
4958
4959 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
4960 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
4961 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
4962 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
4963
4964 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
4965 PostScript formats at
4966 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
4967 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
4968
4969       </div>
4970       <div class="tags">
4971
4972
4973         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>.
4974
4975
4976       </div>
4977     </div>
4978     <div class="padding"></div>
4979
4980     <div class="entry">
4981       <div class="title">
4982         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
4983       </div>
4984       <div class="date">
4985         16th August 2012
4986       </div>
4987       <div class="body">
4988         <p>I dag fyller
4989 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
4990 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
4991 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
4992
4993       </div>
4994       <div class="tags">
4995
4996
4997         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>.
4998
4999
5000       </div>
5001     </div>
5002     <div class="padding"></div>
5003
5004     <div class="entry">
5005       <div class="title">
5006         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
5007       </div>
5008       <div class="date">
5009         24th June 2012
5010       </div>
5011       <div class="body">
5012         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
5013 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
5014 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
5015 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
5016 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
5017 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
5018 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
5019 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
5020 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
5021 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
5022 missing in my book.</p>
5023
5024 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
5025 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
5026 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
5027 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
5028 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
5029 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
5030 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
5031
5032       </div>
5033       <div class="tags">
5034
5035
5036         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>.
5037
5038
5039       </div>
5040     </div>
5041     <div class="padding"></div>
5042
5043     <div class="entry">
5044       <div class="title">
5045         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
5046       </div>
5047       <div class="date">
5048         21st November 2011
5049       </div>
5050       <div class="body">
5051         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
5052 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
5053 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
5054 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
5055 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
5056 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
5057 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
5058 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
5059 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
5060 the tools to do so.</p>
5061
5062 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
5063 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
5064 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
5065 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
5066
5067 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
5068 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
5069 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
5070 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
5071 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
5072 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
5073 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
5074 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
5075
5076 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
5077 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
5078 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
5079
5080 <p><pre>
5081 #!/usr/bin/perl
5082 use strict;
5083 use warnings;
5084 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
5085 BEGIN {
5086     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
5087     my %rhelmodules = (
5088         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
5089         );
5090     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
5091         eval "use $module;";
5092         if ($@) {
5093             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
5094             system("yum install -y $pkg");
5095             eval "use $module;";
5096         }
5097     }
5098 }
5099 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
5100
5101 upgrade_dell();
5102
5103 exit 0;
5104
5105 sub run_firmware_script {
5106     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
5107     unless ($script) {
5108         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
5109         exit 1
5110     }
5111     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
5112
5113     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
5114         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
5115     } else {
5116         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
5117     }
5118 }
5119
5120 sub run_firmware_scripts {
5121     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
5122     # Run firmware packages
5123     for my $dir (@dirs) {
5124         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
5125         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
5126         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
5127             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
5128             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
5129         }
5130         closedir $dh;
5131     }
5132 }
5133
5134 sub download {
5135     my $url = shift;
5136     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
5137     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
5138 }
5139
5140 sub upgrade_dell {
5141     my @dirs;
5142     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5143     chomp $product;
5144
5145     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
5146
5147         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
5148         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
5149
5150         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
5151             CLEANUP => 1
5152             );
5153         chdir($tmpdir);
5154         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
5155         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
5156         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
5157         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
5158         my $fwopts = "-q";
5159         if (@paths) {
5160             for my $url (@paths) {
5161                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
5162             }
5163             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
5164         } else {
5165             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5166             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5167         }
5168         chdir('/');
5169     } else {
5170         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5171         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5172     }
5173 }
5174
5175 sub fetch_dell_fw {
5176     my $path = shift;
5177     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
5178     download($url);
5179 }
5180
5181 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
5182 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
5183 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
5184 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
5185     my $filename = shift;
5186
5187     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5188     chomp $product;
5189     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
5190
5191     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
5192
5193     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
5194     my @paths;
5195     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
5196         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
5197         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
5198         my $oscode;
5199         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
5200             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
5201         } else {
5202             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
5203         }
5204         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
5205         {
5206             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
5207         }
5208     }
5209     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
5210         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
5211
5212         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
5213         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
5214
5215         my $cpath = $component->{path};
5216         for my $path (@paths) {
5217             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
5218                 push(@paths, $cpath);
5219             }
5220         }
5221     }
5222     return @paths;
5223 }
5224 </pre>
5225
5226 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
5227 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
5228 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
5229 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
5230 outdated.</p>
5231
5232       </div>
5233       <div class="tags">
5234
5235
5236         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>.
5237
5238
5239       </div>
5240     </div>
5241     <div class="padding"></div>
5242
5243     <div class="entry">
5244       <div class="title">
5245         <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>
5246       </div>
5247       <div class="date">
5248          4th August 2011
5249       </div>
5250       <div class="body">
5251         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
5252 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
5253 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
5254 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
5255 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
5256 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
5257 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
5258 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
5259 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
5260
5261 <p><blockquote>
5262 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
5263 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
5264 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
5265 </blockquote></p>
5266
5267 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
5268 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
5269 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
5270 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
5271 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
5272 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
5273 hard to explain.</p>
5274
5275 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
5276 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
5277 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
5278 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
5279 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
5280 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
5281 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
5282 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
5283 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
5284 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
5285 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
5286 mode).</p>
5287
5288 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
5289 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
5290 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
5291 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
5292 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
5293 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
5294 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
5295 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
5296 after visiting single user mode.</p>
5297
5298 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
5299 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
5300 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
5301 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
5302 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
5303 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
5304 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
5305 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
5306
5307 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
5308 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
5309 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
5310
5311       </div>
5312       <div class="tags">
5313
5314
5315         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>.
5316
5317
5318       </div>
5319     </div>
5320     <div class="padding"></div>
5321
5322     <div class="entry">
5323       <div class="title">
5324         <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>
5325       </div>
5326       <div class="date">
5327         30th July 2011
5328       </div>
5329       <div class="body">
5330         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
5331 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
5332 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
5333 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
5334 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
5335 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
5336 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
5337 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
5338 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
5339 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
5340 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
5341 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
5342 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
5343
5344 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
5345 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
5346 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
5347 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
5348 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
5349 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
5350 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
5351 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
5352 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
5353
5354 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
5355 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
5356 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
5357 is presented.</p>
5358
5359 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
5360 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
5361 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
5362 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
5363 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
5364 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
5365 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
5366 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
5367 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
5368 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
5369 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
5370 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
5371 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
5372 find time to push this forward.</p>
5373
5374       </div>
5375       <div class="tags">
5376
5377
5378         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>.
5379
5380
5381       </div>
5382     </div>
5383     <div class="padding"></div>
5384
5385     <div class="entry">
5386       <div class="title">
5387         <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>
5388       </div>
5389       <div class="date">
5390         29th July 2011
5391       </div>
5392       <div class="body">
5393         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
5394 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
5395 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
5396 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
5397 issues.</p>
5398
5399 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
5400 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
5401 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
5402
5403 <ol>
5404
5405 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
5406 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
5407 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
5408 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
5409 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
5410 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
5411 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
5412 Debian.</li>
5413
5414 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
5415 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
5416 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
5417 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
5418 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
5419 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
5420 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
5421 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
5422 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
5423 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
5424 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
5425 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
5426 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
5427
5428 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
5429 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
5430 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
5431 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
5432 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
5433 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
5434 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
5435 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
5436 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
5437 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
5438
5439 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
5440 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
5441 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
5442 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
5443 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
5444 latter behaviour.</li>
5445
5446 </ol>
5447
5448 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
5449 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
5450 it do not matter much.</p>
5451
5452 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
5453 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
5454 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
5455
5456       </div>
5457       <div class="tags">
5458
5459
5460         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>.
5461
5462
5463       </div>
5464     </div>
5465     <div class="padding"></div>
5466
5467     <div class="entry">
5468       <div class="title">
5469         <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>
5470       </div>
5471       <div class="date">
5472         26th July 2011
5473       </div>
5474       <div class="body">
5475         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
5476 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
5477 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
5478 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
5479 security support for a few years.</p>
5480
5481 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
5482 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
5483 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
5484 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
5485 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
5486 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
5487 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
5488 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
5489 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
5490 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
5491 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
5492 easier in the future.</p>
5493
5494 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
5495 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
5496 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
5497 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
5498 do not have time for.</p>
5499
5500       </div>
5501       <div class="tags">
5502
5503
5504         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>.
5505
5506
5507       </div>
5508     </div>
5509     <div class="padding"></div>
5510
5511     <div class="entry">
5512       <div class="title">
5513         <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>
5514       </div>
5515       <div class="date">
5516          3rd April 2011
5517       </div>
5518       <div class="body">
5519         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
5520 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
5521 update in English.</p>
5522
5523 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
5524 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
5525 of the British service
5526 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
5527 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
5528 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
5529 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
5530 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
5531 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
5532 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
5533 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
5534 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
5535 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
5536 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
5537 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
5538 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
5539
5540 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
5541 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
5542 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
5543 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
5544 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
5545 public infrastructure.</p>
5546
5547 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
5548 such service?</p>
5549
5550       </div>
5551       <div class="tags">
5552
5553
5554         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>.
5555
5556
5557       </div>
5558     </div>
5559     <div class="padding"></div>
5560
5561     <div class="entry">
5562       <div class="title">
5563         <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>
5564       </div>
5565       <div class="date">
5566         28th January 2011
5567       </div>
5568       <div class="body">
5569         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
5570 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
5571 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
5572 available on the Internet, and check our locally
5573 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
5574 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
5575 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
5576 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
5577 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
5578 out which security holes were present in our free software
5579 collection.</p>
5580
5581 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
5582 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
5583 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
5584 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
5585 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
5586 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
5587 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
5588 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
5589 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
5590 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
5591 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
5592 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
5593 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
5594 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
5595 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
5596 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
5597
5598 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
5599 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
5600 check out, one could look up
5601 <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
5602 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
5603 The most recent one is
5604 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
5605 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
5606 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
5607
5608 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
5609 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
5610 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
5611 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
5612 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
5613 security issues out.</p>
5614
5615 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
5616 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
5617 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
5618 RHEL is providing
5619 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
5620 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
5621 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
5622
5623 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
5624 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
5625 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
5626 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
5627 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
5628 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
5629 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
5630 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
5631 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
5632 established soon.</p>
5633
5634 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
5635 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
5636 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
5637 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
5638 for their packages.</p>
5639
5640       </div>
5641       <div class="tags">
5642
5643
5644         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>.
5645
5646
5647       </div>
5648     </div>
5649     <div class="padding"></div>
5650
5651     <div class="entry">
5652       <div class="title">
5653         <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>
5654       </div>
5655       <div class="date">
5656         23rd January 2011
5657       </div>
5658       <div class="body">
5659         <p>In the
5660 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
5661 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
5662 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
5663 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
5664 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
5665 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
5666 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
5667 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
5668 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
5669 one of my machines like this:</p>
5670
5671 <pre>
5672 loaded modules:
5673 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
5674 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
5675 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
5676 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
5677 10de:03ec pata_amd
5678 10de:03f6 sata_nv
5679 1022:1103 k8temp
5680 109e:036e bttv
5681 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
5682 11ab:4364 sky2
5683 </pre>
5684
5685 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
5686 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
5687
5688 <pre>
5689 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
5690     echo loaded pci modules:
5691     (
5692         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
5693         for address in * ; do
5694             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
5695                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
5696                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
5697                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
5698                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
5699                     echo "$id $module"
5700                 fi
5701             fi
5702         done
5703     )
5704     echo
5705 fi
5706 </pre>
5707
5708 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
5709 mappings:</p>
5710
5711 <pre>
5712 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
5713     echo loaded usb modules:
5714     (
5715         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
5716         for address in * ; do
5717             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
5718                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
5719                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
5720                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
5721                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
5722                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
5723                         echo "$id $module"
5724                     fi
5725                 fi
5726             fi
5727         done
5728     )
5729     echo
5730 fi
5731 </pre>
5732
5733 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
5734 well.</p>
5735
5736       </div>
5737       <div class="tags">
5738
5739
5740         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>.
5741
5742
5743       </div>
5744     </div>
5745     <div class="padding"></div>
5746
5747     <div class="entry">
5748       <div class="title">
5749         <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>
5750       </div>
5751       <div class="date">
5752         22nd December 2010
5753       </div>
5754       <div class="body">
5755         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
5756 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
5757 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
5758 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
5759 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
5760 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
5761 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
5762 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
5763 university.</p>
5764
5765 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
5766 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
5767 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
5768 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
5769 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
5770 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
5771 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
5772 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
5773
5774 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
5775 I perform on a new model.</p>
5776
5777 <ul>
5778
5779 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
5780 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
5781 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
5782
5783 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
5784 installation, X.org is working.</li>
5785
5786 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
5787 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
5788 reported by the program.</li>
5789
5790 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
5791 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
5792 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
5793 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
5794 normally test this by playing
5795 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
5796 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
5797
5798 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
5799 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
5800
5801 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
5802 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
5803
5804 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
5805 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
5806
5807 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
5808 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
5809 few.</li>
5810
5811 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
5812 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
5813 notice this.</li>
5814
5815 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
5816 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
5817 resume.</li>
5818
5819 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
5820 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
5821 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
5822 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
5823 not.</li>
5824
5825 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
5826 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
5827 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
5828 existence.</li>
5829
5830 </ul>
5831
5832 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
5833 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
5834 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
5835 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
5836 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
5837 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
5838 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
5839 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
5840
5841       </div>
5842       <div class="tags">
5843
5844
5845         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>.
5846
5847
5848       </div>
5849     </div>
5850     <div class="padding"></div>
5851
5852     <div class="entry">
5853       <div class="title">
5854         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
5855       </div>
5856       <div class="date">
5857         11th December 2010
5858       </div>
5859       <div class="body">
5860         <p>As I continue to explore
5861 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
5862 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
5863 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
5864
5865 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
5866 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
5867 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
5868 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
5869 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
5870 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
5871 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
5872 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
5873 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
5874 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
5875 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
5876 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
5877 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
5878 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
5879 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
5880 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
5881 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
5882 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
5883 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
5884 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
5885
5886 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
5887 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
5888 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
5889 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
5890 If the Skolelinux foundation
5891 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
5892 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
5893 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
5894 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
5895 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
5896 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
5897 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
5898 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
5899
5900 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
5901 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
5902 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
5903 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
5904 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
5905 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
5906 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
5907 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
5908 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
5909 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
5910 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
5911 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
5912 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
5913 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
5914 currencies.</p>
5915
5916 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
5917 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
5918 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
5919 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
5920 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
5921 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
5922 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
5923 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
5924 BitCoins.  Check out
5925 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
5926 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
5927 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
5928 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
5929 yet.</p>
5930
5931 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
5932 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
5933 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
5934 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
5935 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
5936
5937       </div>
5938       <div class="tags">
5939
5940
5941         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>.
5942
5943
5944       </div>
5945     </div>
5946     <div class="padding"></div>
5947
5948     <div class="entry">
5949       <div class="title">
5950         <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>
5951       </div>
5952       <div class="date">
5953         10th December 2010
5954       </div>
5955       <div class="body">
5956         <p>With this weeks lawless
5957 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
5958 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
5959 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
5960 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
5961 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
5962 A blog post from
5963 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
5964 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
5965 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
5966 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
5967 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
5968 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
5969 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
5970
5971 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
5972 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
5973 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
5974 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
5975 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
5976 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
5977 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
5978 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
5979 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
5980 Debian</a> soon.</p>
5981
5982 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
5983 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
5984 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
5985 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
5986 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
5987 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
5988 you can even get
5989 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
5990 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
5991 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
5992 on the current exchange rates.</p>
5993
5994 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
5995 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
5996 donations to the address
5997 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
5998
5999       </div>
6000       <div class="tags">
6001
6002
6003         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>.
6004
6005
6006       </div>
6007     </div>
6008     <div class="padding"></div>
6009
6010     <div class="entry">
6011       <div class="title">
6012         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
6013       </div>
6014       <div class="date">
6015         27th November 2010
6016       </div>
6017       <div class="body">
6018         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
6019 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
6020 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
6021 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
6022 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
6023 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
6024 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
6025 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
6026
6027 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
6028 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6029 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
6030 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
6031 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
6032 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
6033 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
6034 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
6035 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
6036 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
6037 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
6038
6039 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
6040 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
6041 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
6042 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
6043 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
6044 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
6045 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
6046 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
6047 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
6048 what is going on.</p>
6049
6050       </div>
6051       <div class="tags">
6052
6053
6054         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>.
6055
6056
6057       </div>
6058     </div>
6059     <div class="padding"></div>
6060
6061     <div class="entry">
6062       <div class="title">
6063         <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>
6064       </div>
6065       <div class="date">
6066         22nd November 2010
6067       </div>
6068       <div class="body">
6069         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
6070 upgrade testing of the
6071 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6072 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
6073 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
6074 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
6075
6076 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6077
6078 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6079
6080 <blockquote><p>
6081   apache2.2-bin
6082   aptdaemon
6083   baobab
6084   binfmt-support
6085   browser-plugin-gnash
6086   cheese-common
6087   cli-common
6088   cups-pk-helper
6089   dmz-cursor-theme
6090   empathy
6091   empathy-common
6092   freedesktop-sound-theme
6093   freeglut3
6094   gconf-defaults-service
6095   gdm-themes
6096   gedit-plugins
6097   geoclue
6098   geoclue-hostip
6099   geoclue-localnet
6100   geoclue-manual
6101   geoclue-yahoo
6102   gnash
6103   gnash-common
6104   gnome
6105   gnome-backgrounds
6106   gnome-cards-data
6107   gnome-codec-install
6108   gnome-core
6109   gnome-desktop-environment
6110   gnome-disk-utility
6111   gnome-screenshot
6112   gnome-search-tool
6113   gnome-session-canberra
6114   gnome-system-log
6115   gnome-themes-extras
6116   gnome-themes-more
6117   gnome-user-share
6118   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6119   gstreamer0.10-tools
6120   gtk2-engines
6121   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6122   gtk2-engines-smooth
6123   hamster-applet
6124   libapache2-mod-dnssd
6125   libapr1
6126   libaprutil1
6127   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
6128   libaprutil1-ldap
6129   libart2.0-cil
6130   libboost-date-time1.42.0
6131   libboost-python1.42.0
6132   libboost-thread1.42.0
6133   libchamplain-0.4-0
6134   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
6135   libcheese-gtk18
6136   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6137   libcryptui0
6138   libdiscid0
6139   libelf1
6140   libepc-1.0-2
6141   libepc-common
6142   libepc-ui-1.0-2
6143   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6144   libfreerdp0
6145   libgconf2.0-cil
6146   libgdata-common
6147   libgdata7
6148   libgdu-gtk0
6149   libgee2
6150   libgeoclue0
6151   libgexiv2-0
6152   libgif4
6153   libglade2.0-cil
6154   libglib2.0-cil
6155   libgmime2.4-cil
6156   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6157   libgnome2.24-cil
6158   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
6159   libgpod-common
6160   libgpod4
6161   libgtk2.0-cil
6162   libgtkglext1
6163   libgtksourceview2.0-common
6164   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6165   libmono-addins0.2-cil
6166   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
6167   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6168   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
6169   libmono-posix2.0-cil
6170   libmono-security2.0-cil
6171   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6172   libmono-system2.0-cil
6173   libmtp8
6174   libmusicbrainz3-6
6175   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
6176   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
6177   libopal3.6.8
6178   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
6179   libpt2.6.7
6180   libpython2.6
6181   librpm1
6182   librpmio1
6183   libsdl1.2debian
6184   libsrtp0
6185   libssh-4
6186   libtelepathy-farsight0
6187   libtelepathy-glib0
6188   libtidy-0.99-0
6189   media-player-info
6190   mesa-utils
6191   mono-2.0-gac
6192   mono-gac
6193   mono-runtime
6194   nautilus-sendto
6195   nautilus-sendto-empathy
6196   p7zip-full
6197   pkg-config
6198   python-aptdaemon
6199   python-aptdaemon-gtk
6200   python-axiom
6201   python-beautifulsoup
6202   python-bugbuddy
6203   python-clientform
6204   python-coherence
6205   python-configobj
6206   python-crypto
6207   python-cupshelpers
6208   python-elementtree
6209   python-epsilon
6210   python-evolution
6211   python-feedparser
6212   python-gdata
6213   python-gdbm
6214   python-gst0.10
6215   python-gtkglext1
6216   python-gtksourceview2
6217   python-httplib2
6218   python-louie
6219   python-mako
6220   python-markupsafe
6221   python-mechanize
6222   python-nevow
6223   python-notify
6224   python-opengl
6225   python-openssl
6226   python-pam
6227   python-pkg-resources
6228   python-pyasn1
6229   python-pysqlite2
6230   python-rdflib
6231   python-serial
6232   python-tagpy
6233   python-twisted-bin
6234   python-twisted-conch
6235   python-twisted-core
6236   python-twisted-web
6237   python-utidylib
6238   python-webkit
6239   python-xdg
6240   python-zope.interface
6241   remmina
6242   remmina-plugin-data
6243   remmina-plugin-rdp
6244   remmina-plugin-vnc
6245   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6246   rhythmbox-plugins
6247   rpm-common
6248   rpm2cpio
6249   seahorse-plugins
6250   shotwell
6251   software-center
6252   system-config-printer-udev
6253   telepathy-gabble
6254   telepathy-mission-control-5
6255   telepathy-salut
6256   tomboy
6257   totem
6258   totem-coherence
6259   totem-mozilla
6260   totem-plugins
6261   transmission-common
6262   xdg-user-dirs
6263   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
6264   xserver-xephyr
6265 </p></blockquote>
6266
6267 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6268
6269 <blockquote><p>
6270   cheese
6271   ekiga
6272   eog
6273   epiphany-extensions
6274   evolution-exchange
6275   fast-user-switch-applet
6276   file-roller
6277   gcalctool
6278   gconf-editor
6279   gdm
6280   gedit
6281   gedit-common
6282   gnome-games
6283   gnome-games-data
6284   gnome-nettool
6285   gnome-system-tools
6286   gnome-themes
6287   gnuchess
6288   gucharmap
6289   guile-1.8-libs
6290   libavahi-ui0
6291   libdmx1
6292   libgalago3
6293   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6294   libgtksourceview2.0-0
6295   liblircclient0
6296   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
6297   libspeexdsp1
6298   libsvga1
6299   rhythmbox
6300   seahorse
6301   sound-juicer
6302   system-config-printer
6303   totem-common
6304   transmission-gtk
6305   vinagre
6306   vino
6307 </p></blockquote>
6308
6309 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6310
6311 <blockquote><p>
6312   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6313 </p></blockquote>
6314
6315 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6316
6317 <blockquote><p>
6318 [nothing]
6319 </p></blockquote>
6320
6321 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6322
6323 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6324
6325 <blockquote><p>
6326   ksmserver
6327 </p></blockquote>
6328
6329 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6330
6331 <blockquote><p>
6332   kwin
6333   network-manager-kde
6334 </p></blockquote>
6335
6336 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6337
6338 <blockquote><p>
6339   arts
6340   dolphin
6341   freespacenotifier
6342   google-gadgets-gst
6343   google-gadgets-xul
6344   kappfinder
6345   kcalc
6346   kcharselect
6347   kde-core
6348   kde-plasma-desktop
6349   kde-standard
6350   kde-window-manager
6351   kdeartwork
6352   kdeartwork-emoticons
6353   kdeartwork-style
6354   kdeartwork-theme-icon
6355   kdebase
6356   kdebase-apps
6357   kdebase-workspace
6358   kdebase-workspace-bin
6359   kdebase-workspace-data
6360   kdeeject
6361   kdelibs
6362   kdeplasma-addons
6363   kdeutils
6364   kdewallpapers
6365   kdf
6366   kfloppy
6367   kgpg
6368   khelpcenter4
6369   kinfocenter
6370   konq-plugins-l10n
6371   konqueror-nsplugins
6372   kscreensaver
6373   kscreensaver-xsavers
6374   ktimer
6375   kwrite
6376   libgle3
6377   libkde4-ruby1.8
6378   libkonq5
6379   libkonq5-templates
6380   libnetpbm10
6381   libplasma-ruby
6382   libplasma-ruby1.8
6383   libqt4-ruby1.8
6384   marble-data
6385   marble-plugins
6386   netpbm
6387   nuvola-icon-theme
6388   plasma-dataengines-workspace
6389   plasma-desktop
6390   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
6391   plasma-runners-addons
6392   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
6393   plasma-scriptengine-python
6394   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
6395   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
6396   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
6397   plasma-scriptengines
6398   plasma-wallpapers-addons
6399   plasma-widget-folderview
6400   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6401   ruby
6402   sweeper
6403   update-notifier-kde
6404   xscreensaver-data-extra
6405   xscreensaver-gl
6406   xscreensaver-gl-extra
6407   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6408 </p></blockquote>
6409
6410 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6411
6412 <blockquote><p>
6413   ark
6414   google-gadgets-common
6415   google-gadgets-qt
6416   htdig
6417   kate
6418   kdebase-bin
6419   kdebase-data
6420   kdepasswd
6421   kfind
6422   klipper
6423   konq-plugins
6424   konqueror
6425   ksysguard
6426   ksysguardd
6427   libarchive1
6428   libcln6
6429   libeet1
6430   libeina-svn-06
6431   libggadget-1.0-0b
6432   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
6433   libgps19
6434   libkdecorations4
6435   libkephal4
6436   libkonq4
6437   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
6438   libkscreensaver5
6439   libksgrd4
6440   libksignalplotter4
6441   libkunitconversion4
6442   libkwineffects1a
6443   libmarblewidget4
6444   libntrack-qt4-1
6445   libntrack0
6446   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
6447   libplasmaclock4a
6448   libplasmagenericshell4
6449   libprocesscore4a
6450   libprocessui4a
6451   libqalculate5
6452   libqedje0a
6453   libqtruby4shared2
6454   libqzion0a
6455   libruby1.8
6456   libscim8c2a
6457   libsmokekdecore4-3
6458   libsmokekdeui4-3
6459   libsmokekfile3
6460   libsmokekhtml3
6461   libsmokekio3
6462   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
6463   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
6464   libsmokekparts3
6465   libsmokektexteditor3
6466   libsmokekutils3
6467   libsmokenepomuk3
6468   libsmokephonon3
6469   libsmokeplasma3
6470   libsmokeqtcore4-3
6471   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
6472   libsmokeqtgui4-3
6473   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
6474   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
6475   libsmokeqtscript4-3
6476   libsmokeqtsql4-3
6477   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
6478   libsmokeqttest4-3
6479   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
6480   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
6481   libsmokeqtxml4-3
6482   libsmokesolid3
6483   libsmokesoprano3
6484   libtaskmanager4a
6485   libtidy-0.99-0
6486   libweather-ion4a
6487   libxklavier16
6488   libxxf86misc1
6489   okteta
6490   oxygencursors
6491   plasma-dataengines-addons
6492   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
6493   plasma-widget-lancelot
6494   plasma-widgets-addons
6495   plasma-widgets-workspace
6496   polkit-kde-1
6497   ruby1.8
6498   systemsettings
6499   update-notifier-common
6500 </p></blockquote>
6501
6502 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
6503 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
6504 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
6505 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
6506
6507       </div>
6508       <div class="tags">
6509
6510
6511         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>.
6512
6513
6514       </div>
6515     </div>
6516     <div class="padding"></div>
6517
6518     <div class="entry">
6519       <div class="title">
6520         <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>
6521       </div>
6522       <div class="date">
6523         22nd November 2010
6524       </div>
6525       <div class="body">
6526         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
6527 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
6528 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
6529 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
6530 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
6531 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
6532 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
6533 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
6534 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
6535
6536 <p>I found
6537 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
6538 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
6539 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
6540 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
6541 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
6542 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
6543
6544 <pre>
6545 #!/bin/sh
6546
6547 # Based on
6548 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
6549
6550 set -e
6551 set -x
6552
6553 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
6554     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
6555     exit 1
6556 else
6557     host="$1"
6558 fi
6559
6560 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
6561     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
6562     exit 1
6563 fi
6564
6565 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
6566 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
6567 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
6568 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
6569
6570 img=$host.img
6571 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
6572 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
6573
6574 parted $img mklabel msdos
6575 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
6576 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
6577 parted $img set 1 boot on
6578
6579 modprobe dm-mod
6580 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
6581 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
6582
6583 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
6584 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
6585 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
6586
6587 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
6588 losetup -d /dev/loop0
6589 </pre>
6590
6591 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
6592 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
6593
6594 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
6595 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
6596 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
6597 seem to work just fine.</p>
6598
6599       </div>
6600       <div class="tags">
6601
6602
6603         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>.
6604
6605
6606       </div>
6607     </div>
6608     <div class="padding"></div>
6609
6610     <div class="entry">
6611       <div class="title">
6612         <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>
6613       </div>
6614       <div class="date">
6615         20th November 2010
6616       </div>
6617       <div class="body">
6618         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
6619 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6620 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
6621 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
6622
6623 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
6624 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
6625 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
6626
6627 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6628
6629 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6630
6631 <blockquote><p>
6632   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
6633   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
6634   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
6635   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
6636   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
6637   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
6638   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
6639   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
6640   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
6641   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
6642   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6643   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6644   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
6645   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
6646   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
6647   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
6648   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6649   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
6650   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6651   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
6652   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
6653   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6654   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
6655   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
6656   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
6657   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6658   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6659   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
6660   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6661   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
6662   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
6663   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
6664   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
6665   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
6666   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
6667   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
6668   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
6669   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
6670   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
6671   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
6672   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
6673   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
6674   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
6675   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
6676   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
6677   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
6678   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
6679   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
6680   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
6681   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
6682   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
6683   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
6684   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6685   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
6686   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
6687   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
6688   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
6689   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
6690   zip
6691 </p></blockquote>
6692
6693 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
6694
6695 <blockquote><p>
6696   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
6697   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
6698   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
6699   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
6700   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
6701   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
6702   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
6703   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
6704   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
6705   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
6706   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
6707   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
6708   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
6709   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
6710   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6711   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
6712   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6713   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
6714   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
6715   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
6716   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
6717   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
6718   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
6719   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
6720   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
6721   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
6722   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
6723   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
6724   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
6725 </p></blockquote>
6726
6727 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6728
6729 <blockquote><p>
6730   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6731 </p></blockquote>
6732
6733 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6734
6735 <blockquote><p>
6736 [nothing]
6737 </p></blockquote>
6738
6739 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
6740
6741 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6742
6743 <blockquote><p>
6744   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
6745   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
6746   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
6747   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
6748   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
6749   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
6750   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
6751   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
6752   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
6753   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
6754   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
6755   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
6756   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
6757   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
6758   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
6759   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
6760   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
6761   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
6762   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
6763   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
6764   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
6765   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
6766   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
6767   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
6768   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
6769   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
6770   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
6771   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
6772   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
6773   ttf-sazanami-gothic
6774 </p></blockquote>
6775
6776 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6777
6778 <blockquote><p>
6779   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
6780   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
6781   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
6782   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
6783   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
6784   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
6785   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
6786   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
6787   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
6788   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
6789   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
6790   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
6791   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
6792   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
6793   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
6794   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
6795   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
6796   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
6797   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
6798   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
6799   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6800   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
6801   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
6802   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
6803   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
6804   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
6805   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
6806   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
6807   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
6808   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
6809   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
6810   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
6811   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
6812 </p></blockquote>
6813
6814 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6815
6816 <blockquote><p>
6817   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
6818   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
6819   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
6820   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
6821   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6822   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
6823   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6824 </p></blockquote>
6825
6826 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
6827
6828 <blockquote><p>
6829   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
6830 </p></blockquote>
6831
6832       </div>
6833       <div class="tags">
6834
6835
6836         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>.
6837
6838
6839       </div>
6840     </div>
6841     <div class="padding"></div>
6842
6843     <div class="entry">
6844       <div class="title">
6845         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
6846       </div>
6847       <div class="date">
6848         20th November 2010
6849       </div>
6850       <div class="body">
6851         <p>Answering
6852 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
6853 call from the Gnash project</a> for
6854 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
6855 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
6856 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
6857 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
6858 releases out more often.</p>
6859
6860 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
6861 I have considered setting up a <a
6862 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
6863 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
6864 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
6865 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
6866 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
6867 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
6868 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
6869 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
6870 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
6871 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
6872 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
6873 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
6874
6875       </div>
6876       <div class="tags">
6877
6878
6879         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>.
6880
6881
6882       </div>
6883     </div>
6884     <div class="padding"></div>
6885
6886     <div class="entry">
6887       <div class="title">
6888         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
6889       </div>
6890       <div class="date">
6891          9th November 2010
6892       </div>
6893       <div class="body">
6894         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
6895
6896 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
6897 3D linked in from
6898 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
6899 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
6900
6901       </div>
6902       <div class="tags">
6903
6904
6905         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>.
6906
6907
6908       </div>
6909     </div>
6910     <div class="padding"></div>
6911
6912     <div class="entry">
6913       <div class="title">
6914         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
6915       </div>
6916       <div class="date">
6917         24th October 2010
6918       </div>
6919       <div class="body">
6920         <p>Some updates.</p>
6921
6922 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
6923 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
6924 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
6925 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
6926 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
6927 :)</p>
6928
6929 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
6930 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
6931 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
6932 It is called
6933 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
6934 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
6935 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
6936 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
6937 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
6938 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
6939
6940 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
6941 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
6942 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
6943 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
6944 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
6945 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
6946 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
6947 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
6948 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
6949 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
6950
6951       </div>
6952       <div class="tags">
6953
6954
6955         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>.
6956
6957
6958       </div>
6959     </div>
6960     <div class="padding"></div>
6961
6962     <div class="entry">
6963       <div class="title">
6964         <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>
6965       </div>
6966       <div class="date">
6967          4th September 2010
6968       </div>
6969       <div class="body">
6970         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
6971 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
6972 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
6973 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
6974 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
6975 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
6976 installed.</p>
6977
6978 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
6979 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
6980 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
6981 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
6982 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6983 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
6984 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
6985 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
6986 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
6987
6988 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
6989 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
6990 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
6991 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
6992 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
6993 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
6994 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
6995 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
6996 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
6997 pages they want to visit.</p>
6998
6999 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
7000 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
7001 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
7002 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
7003 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
7004 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
7005 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
7006 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
7007 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
7008 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
7009 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
7010
7011       </div>
7012       <div class="tags">
7013
7014
7015         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>.
7016
7017
7018       </div>
7019     </div>
7020     <div class="padding"></div>
7021
7022     <div class="entry">
7023       <div class="title">
7024         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
7025       </div>
7026       <div class="date">
7027         27th July 2010
7028       </div>
7029       <div class="body">
7030         <p>I discovered this while doing
7031 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
7032 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
7033 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
7034 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
7035 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
7036
7037 <p>An example is from todays
7038 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
7039 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
7040 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
7041 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
7042 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
7043 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
7044 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
7045
7046 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
7047
7048 <blockquote><pre>
7049 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
7050  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
7051   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
7052 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
7053  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
7054 </pre></blockquote>
7055
7056 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
7057 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
7058 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
7059 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
7060 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
7061 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
7062 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
7063 of dependency loops.</p>
7064
7065 <p>Thanks to
7066 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
7067 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
7068 dependencies
7069 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
7070 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
7071
7072 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
7073 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
7074 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
7075 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
7076 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
7077 it.</p>
7078
7079       </div>
7080       <div class="tags">
7081
7082
7083         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>.
7084
7085
7086       </div>
7087     </div>
7088     <div class="padding"></div>
7089
7090     <div class="entry">
7091       <div class="title">
7092         <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>
7093       </div>
7094       <div class="date">
7095         17th July 2010
7096       </div>
7097       <div class="body">
7098         <p>This is a
7099 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
7100 on my
7101 <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
7102 work</a> on
7103 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
7104 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
7105
7106 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
7107 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
7108 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
7109 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
7110
7111 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
7112 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
7113 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
7114
7115 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
7116
7117 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
7118 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
7119 the web.
7120
7121 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
7122 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
7123 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
7124 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
7125 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
7126 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
7127
7128 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
7129 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
7130 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
7131 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
7132 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
7133 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
7134 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
7135 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
7136 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
7137 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
7138 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
7139 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
7140 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
7141 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
7142 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
7143 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
7144
7145 <blockquote><pre>
7146 ldapsearch -h ldap \
7147   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
7148   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
7149   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
7150   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
7151   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
7152   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
7153
7154 ldapsearch -h ldap \
7155   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
7156   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
7157   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
7158   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
7159   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
7160 </pre></blockquote>
7161
7162 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
7163 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
7164 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
7165 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7166 also exist.</p>
7167
7168 <blockquote><pre>
7169 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7170 objectclass: top
7171 objectclass: dnsdomain
7172 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7173 dc: tjener
7174 arecord: 10.0.2.2
7175 associateddomain: tjener.intern
7176
7177 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7178 objectclass: top
7179 objectclass: dnsdomain2
7180 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7181 dc: 2
7182 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
7183 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
7184 </pre></blockquote>
7185
7186 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
7187 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
7188 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
7189 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
7190 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
7191 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
7192 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
7193 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
7194 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
7195 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
7196 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
7197 instead.</p>
7198
7199 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
7200 like this:</p>
7201
7202 <blockquote><pre>
7203 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
7204   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
7205   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
7206   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
7207   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
7208   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
7209
7210 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
7211   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
7212 </pre></blockquote>
7213
7214 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
7215 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
7216 reverse lookups.</p>
7217
7218 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
7219 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
7220 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
7221 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
7222
7223 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
7224 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
7225 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
7226
7227 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
7228 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
7229 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
7230 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
7231 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
7232
7233 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
7234 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
7235 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
7236 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
7237 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
7238
7239 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
7240 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
7241 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
7242 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
7243 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
7244 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
7245
7246 <blockquote><pre>
7247 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
7248     SUP top
7249     AUXILIARY
7250     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
7251           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
7252           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
7253           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
7254           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
7255     ))
7256 </pre></blockquote>
7257
7258 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
7259 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
7260 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
7261 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
7262 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
7263 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
7264
7265 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
7266
7267 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
7268 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
7269 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
7270 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
7271 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
7272
7273 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
7274 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
7275 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
7276 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
7277
7278 <blockquote><pre>
7279 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
7280 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
7281 </pre></blockquote>
7282
7283 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
7284 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
7285 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
7286 search result is this entry:</p>
7287
7288 <blockquote><pre>
7289 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7290 cn: dhcp
7291 objectClass: top
7292 objectClass: dhcpServer
7293 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7294 </pre></blockquote>
7295
7296 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
7297 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
7298 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
7299 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
7300 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
7301 The search result is this entry:</p>
7302
7303 <blockquote><pre>
7304 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7305 cn: DHCP Config
7306 objectClass: top
7307 objectClass: dhcpService
7308 objectClass: dhcpOptions
7309 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7310 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
7311 dhcpStatements: authoritative
7312 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
7313 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
7314 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
7315 </pre></blockquote>
7316
7317 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
7318 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
7319 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
7320 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
7321 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
7322 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
7323 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
7324 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
7325 related computer objects.</p>
7326
7327 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
7328 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
7329 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
7330 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
7331 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
7332 like:</p>
7333
7334 <blockquote><pre>
7335 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7336 cn: hostname
7337 objectClass: top
7338 objectClass: dhcpHost
7339 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
7340 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
7341 </pre></blockquote>
7342
7343 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
7344 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
7345 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
7346 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
7347 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
7348 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
7349 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
7350 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
7351 structural object class.
7352
7353 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
7354
7355 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
7356 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
7357 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
7358 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
7359 in the configuration.</p>
7360
7361 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
7362 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
7363 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
7364 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
7365 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
7366 structure.</p>
7367
7368 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
7369 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
7370
7371 <blockquote><pre>
7372 ou=services
7373   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
7374     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
7375     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
7376       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
7377         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
7378     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
7379       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
7380         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
7381     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
7382       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
7383 </pre></blockquote>
7384
7385 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
7386 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
7387 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
7388 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
7389
7390 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
7391 like this:</p>
7392
7393 <blockquote><pre>
7394 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7395 dc: hostname
7396 objectClass: top
7397 objectClass: dhcpHost
7398 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7399 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
7400 associateddomain: hostname.intern
7401 arecord: 10.11.12.13
7402 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
7403 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
7404 </pre></blockquote>
7405
7406 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
7407 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
7408 auxiliary object class.</p>
7409
7410       </div>
7411       <div class="tags">
7412
7413
7414         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>.
7415
7416
7417       </div>
7418     </div>
7419     <div class="padding"></div>
7420
7421     <div class="entry">
7422       <div class="title">
7423         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
7424       </div>
7425       <div class="date">
7426         14th July 2010
7427       </div>
7428       <div class="body">
7429         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
7430 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
7431 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
7432 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
7433 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
7434
7435 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
7436 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
7437
7438 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
7439 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
7440 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
7441 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
7442 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
7443 to a slave DNS server.</p>
7444
7445 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
7446 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
7447 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
7448 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
7449 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
7450 seem to work.</p>
7451
7452 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
7453 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
7454 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
7455 this:</p>
7456
7457 <blockquote><pre>
7458   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7459   cn: hostname
7460   objectClass: dhcphost
7461   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7462   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
7463   associateddomain: hostname.intern
7464   arecord: 10.11.12.13
7465   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
7466   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
7467   ldapconfigsound: Y
7468 </pre></blockquote>
7469
7470 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
7471 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
7472 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
7473 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
7474
7475 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
7476 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
7477 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
7478 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
7479 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
7480 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
7481 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
7482 might be a good place to put it.</p>
7483
7484 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
7485 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7486
7487       </div>
7488       <div class="tags">
7489
7490
7491         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>.
7492
7493
7494       </div>
7495     </div>
7496     <div class="padding"></div>
7497
7498     <div class="entry">
7499       <div class="title">
7500         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
7501       </div>
7502       <div class="date">
7503         11th July 2010
7504       </div>
7505       <div class="body">
7506         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
7507 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
7508 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
7509 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
7510
7511 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
7512 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
7513 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
7514 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
7515 LTSP clients.</p>
7516
7517 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
7518 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
7519 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
7520
7521 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
7522 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
7523 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
7524
7525 <blockquote><pre>
7526 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
7527 #
7528 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
7529 #
7530 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
7531 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
7532 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
7533 #
7534 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
7535 # existence of attribute names.
7536 #
7537 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
7538 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
7539 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
7540 #
7541 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
7542 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
7543 #
7544 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
7545 #     SUP top
7546 #     AUXILIARY
7547 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
7548
7549 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
7550 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
7551     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
7552     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
7553         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
7554         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
7555             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
7556             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
7557             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
7558             # bass value on to clients
7559             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
7560         done
7561     done
7562 fi
7563 </pre></blockquote>
7564
7565 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
7566 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
7567 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
7568 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
7569 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
7570
7571 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
7572 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7573
7574 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
7575 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
7576 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
7577 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
7578 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
7579 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
7580
7581       </div>
7582       <div class="tags">
7583
7584
7585         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>.
7586
7587
7588       </div>
7589     </div>
7590     <div class="padding"></div>
7591
7592     <div class="entry">
7593       <div class="title">
7594         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
7595       </div>
7596       <div class="date">
7597          9th July 2010
7598       </div>
7599       <div class="body">
7600         <p>Since
7601 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
7602 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
7603 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
7604 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
7605 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
7606 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
7607 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
7608 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
7609 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
7610 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
7611 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
7612 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
7613 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
7614
7615       </div>
7616       <div class="tags">
7617
7618
7619         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>.
7620
7621
7622       </div>
7623     </div>
7624     <div class="padding"></div>
7625
7626     <div class="entry">
7627       <div class="title">
7628         <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>
7629       </div>
7630       <div class="date">
7631          3rd July 2010
7632       </div>
7633       <div class="body">
7634         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
7635 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
7636 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
7637 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
7638 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
7639 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
7640 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
7641 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
7642
7643 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
7644 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
7645 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
7646 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
7647 publish the difference.</p>
7648
7649 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7650
7651 <blockquote><p>
7652   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7653   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
7654   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
7655   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
7656   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
7657   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
7658   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
7659   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
7660 </p></blockquote>
7661
7662 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7663
7664 <blockquote><p>
7665   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
7666   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
7667   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
7668   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
7669   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
7670   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
7671   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
7672   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
7673   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7674   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
7675   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
7676   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
7677   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
7678   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
7679   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
7680   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
7681   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
7682   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
7683   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
7684   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
7685 </p></blockquote>
7686
7687 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7688
7689 <blockquote><p>
7690   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
7691   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
7692   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
7693   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
7694   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
7695   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
7696   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
7697   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
7698   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
7699   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
7700   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
7701   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
7702   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
7703   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
7704   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
7705   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
7706   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
7707   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
7708   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
7709   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
7710   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
7711 </p></blockquote>
7712
7713 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7714
7715 <blockquote><p>
7716   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
7717   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
7718   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
7719 </p></blockquote>
7720
7721 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
7722 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
7723 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
7724 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
7725 the difference somewhat.
7726
7727       </div>
7728       <div class="tags">
7729
7730
7731         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>.
7732
7733
7734       </div>
7735     </div>
7736     <div class="padding"></div>
7737
7738     <div class="entry">
7739       <div class="title">
7740         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
7741       </div>
7742       <div class="date">
7743         28th June 2010
7744       </div>
7745       <div class="body">
7746         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
7747 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
7748 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
7749 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
7750 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
7751 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
7752 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
7753 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
7754 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
7755 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
7756
7757 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
7758 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
7759 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
7760 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
7761 released.</p>
7762
7763 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
7764 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
7765 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
7766 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
7767
7768 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
7769 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7770
7771 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
7772 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
7773 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
7774 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
7775 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
7776
7777       </div>
7778       <div class="tags">
7779
7780
7781         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>.
7782
7783
7784       </div>
7785     </div>
7786     <div class="padding"></div>
7787
7788     <div class="entry">
7789       <div class="title">
7790         <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>
7791       </div>
7792       <div class="date">
7793         24th June 2010
7794       </div>
7795       <div class="body">
7796         <p>A while back, I
7797 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
7798 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
7799 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
7800 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
7801
7802 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
7803 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
7804 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
7805 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
7806
7807 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
7808 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
7809 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
7810 Debian Edu.</p>
7811
7812 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
7813 the
7814 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
7815 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
7816 available today from IETF.</p>
7817
7818 <pre>
7819 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
7820 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
7821 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
7822  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
7823         NAME 'dhcpHost'
7824         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
7825 -       SUP top
7826 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
7827         MUST cn
7828         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
7829         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
7830 </pre>
7831
7832 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
7833 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
7834 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
7835
7836 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
7837 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
7838
7839       </div>
7840       <div class="tags">
7841
7842
7843         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>.
7844
7845
7846       </div>
7847     </div>
7848     <div class="padding"></div>
7849
7850     <div class="entry">
7851       <div class="title">
7852         <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>
7853       </div>
7854       <div class="date">
7855         16th June 2010
7856       </div>
7857       <div class="body">
7858         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
7859 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
7860 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
7861 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
7862 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
7863 this:
7864
7865 <blockquote><pre>
7866 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
7867 tasksel --new-install
7868 </pre></blockquote>
7869
7870 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
7871 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
7872 any output what so ever.
7873
7874 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
7875 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
7876 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
7877 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
7878 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
7879 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
7880 code like this:
7881
7882 <blockquote><pre>
7883 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
7884 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
7885 $cmd
7886 </pre></blockquote>
7887
7888 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
7889 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
7890 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
7891 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
7892 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
7893 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
7894 installation.</p>
7895
7896 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
7897 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
7898 like this.</p>
7899
7900       </div>
7901       <div class="tags">
7902
7903
7904         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>.
7905
7906
7907       </div>
7908     </div>
7909     <div class="padding"></div>
7910
7911     <div class="entry">
7912       <div class="title">
7913         <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>
7914       </div>
7915       <div class="date">
7916         13th June 2010
7917       </div>
7918       <div class="body">
7919         <p>My
7920 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
7921 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
7922 finally made the upgrade logs available from
7923 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
7924 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
7925 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
7926 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
7927
7928 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
7929 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
7930 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
7931 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
7932 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
7933 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
7934 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
7935 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
7936
7937 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
7938 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
7939 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
7940 too surprising.</p>
7941
7942 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
7943 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
7944 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
7945 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
7946 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
7947 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
7948 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
7949 continue.</p>
7950
7951 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
7952 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
7953   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
7954   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
7955   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
7956   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
7957   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
7958   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
7959   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
7960   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
7961   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
7962   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
7963   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
7964   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
7965   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
7966   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7967   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
7968   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
7969   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
7970   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
7971   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
7972   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
7973   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
7974   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
7975   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
7976   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
7977   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
7978   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
7979   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
7980   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
7981
7982 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
7983
7984 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
7985   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
7986   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
7987   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
7988   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
7989   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
7990   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
7991   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
7992   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
7993   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
7994   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7995   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
7996   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
7997   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
7998   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
7999   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
8000   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
8001   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
8002   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
8003   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
8004   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
8005   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
8006   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
8007   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
8008   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8009   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
8010   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
8011   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
8012   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
8013   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8014   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8015   zip</p>
8016
8017 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
8018
8019 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
8020   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
8021   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
8022   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
8023   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
8024   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
8025   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8026   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8027   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
8028   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
8029   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
8030   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
8031   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8032   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8033   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8034   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8035   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8036   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
8037   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
8038   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
8039   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
8040   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
8041   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
8042   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
8043   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
8044   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
8045   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
8046   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
8047
8048 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
8049 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
8050   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8051   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
8052   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
8053   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8054   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
8055   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
8056   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8057   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
8058   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
8059   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
8060   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
8061   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
8062   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
8063   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
8064   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
8065   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
8066   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
8067   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
8068   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
8069   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
8070   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
8071   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
8072   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
8073   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
8074   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
8075   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
8076   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
8077   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
8078   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
8079   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
8080   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
8081   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
8082   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
8083   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8084   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8085   xulrunner-1.9</p>
8086
8087
8088       </div>
8089       <div class="tags">
8090
8091
8092         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>.
8093
8094
8095       </div>
8096     </div>
8097     <div class="padding"></div>
8098
8099     <div class="entry">
8100       <div class="title">
8101         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
8102       </div>
8103       <div class="date">
8104         11th June 2010
8105       </div>
8106       <div class="body">
8107         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
8108 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
8109 have been discovered and reported in the process
8110 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
8111 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
8112 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
8113 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
8114 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
8115
8116 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
8117 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
8118 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
8119 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
8120 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
8121 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
8122
8123 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
8124 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
8125 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
8126 is created.  The bug report
8127 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
8128 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
8129 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
8130 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
8131 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
8132 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
8133 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
8134 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
8135 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
8136 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
8137 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
8138 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
8139 Debian Squeeze.</p>
8140
8141 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
8142 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
8143 trick:</p>
8144
8145 <blockquote><pre>
8146 #!/bin/sh
8147 set -ex
8148
8149 if [ "$1" ] ; then
8150     desktop=$1
8151 else
8152     desktop=gnome
8153 fi
8154
8155 from=lenny
8156 to=squeeze
8157
8158 exec &lt; /dev/null
8159 unset LANG
8160 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
8161 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
8162 fuser -mv .
8163 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
8164 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
8165 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
8166 #!/bin/sh
8167 exit 101
8168 EOF
8169 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
8170 exit_cleanup() {
8171     umount $tmpdir/proc
8172 }
8173 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
8174 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
8175 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
8176
8177 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
8178
8179 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
8180 # to return the correct answers.
8181 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
8182     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
8183
8184 # Include the desktop and laptop task
8185 for test in desktop laptop ; do
8186     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
8187 #!/bin/sh
8188 exit 2
8189 EOF
8190     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
8191 done
8192
8193 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8194 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
8195 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
8196 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
8197
8198 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
8199 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
8200 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
8201 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
8202 fuser -mv
8203 </pre></blockquote>
8204
8205 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
8206 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
8207 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
8208 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
8209 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
8210 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
8211
8212 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
8213 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
8214 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
8215 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
8216 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
8217 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
8218 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
8219
8220 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
8221 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
8222 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
8223 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
8224 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
8225 packages.</p>
8226
8227       </div>
8228       <div class="tags">
8229
8230
8231         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>.
8232
8233
8234       </div>
8235     </div>
8236     <div class="padding"></div>
8237
8238     <div class="entry">
8239       <div class="title">
8240         <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>
8241       </div>
8242       <div class="date">
8243          6th June 2010
8244       </div>
8245       <div class="body">
8246         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
8247 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
8248 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
8249 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
8250 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
8251 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
8252 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
8253
8254 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
8255 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
8256 COLUMNS):</p>
8257
8258 <blockquote><pre>
8259 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
8260 previous=N
8261 PREVLEVEL=
8262 RUNLEVEL=
8263 runlevel=S
8264 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
8265 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
8266 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
8267 </pre></blockquote>
8268
8269 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
8270 script.</p>
8271
8272 <blockquote><pre>
8273 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
8274 previous=N
8275 PREVLEVEL=N
8276 RUNLEVEL=S
8277 runlevel=S
8278 </pre></blockquote>
8279
8280 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
8281 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
8282 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
8283
8284 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
8285 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
8286 choice.</p>
8287
8288       </div>
8289       <div class="tags">
8290
8291
8292         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>.
8293
8294
8295       </div>
8296     </div>
8297     <div class="padding"></div>
8298
8299     <div class="entry">
8300       <div class="title">
8301         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
8302       </div>
8303       <div class="date">
8304          6th June 2010
8305       </div>
8306       <div class="body">
8307         <p>Via the
8308 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
8309 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
8310 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
8311 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
8312 following the standards wars of today.</p>
8313
8314       </div>
8315       <div class="tags">
8316
8317
8318         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>.
8319
8320
8321       </div>
8322     </div>
8323     <div class="padding"></div>
8324
8325     <div class="entry">
8326       <div class="title">
8327         <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>
8328       </div>
8329       <div class="date">
8330          3rd June 2010
8331       </div>
8332       <div class="body">
8333         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
8334 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
8335 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
8336 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
8337 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
8338
8339 <blockquote><pre>
8340 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
8341   vendor                    count
8342   Dell Computer Corporation     1
8343     PowerEdge 1750              1
8344   IBM                           1
8345     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
8346   Intel                         2
8347   [no-dmi-info]                 3
8348 maintainer:~#
8349 </pre></blockquote>
8350
8351 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
8352 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
8353 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
8354 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
8355 option to list the individual machines.</p>
8356
8357 <p>A larger list is
8358 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
8359 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
8360 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
8361 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
8362 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
8363 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
8364 collector.</p>
8365
8366       </div>
8367       <div class="tags">
8368
8369
8370         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>.
8371
8372
8373       </div>
8374     </div>
8375     <div class="padding"></div>
8376
8377     <div class="entry">
8378       <div class="title">
8379         <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>
8380       </div>
8381       <div class="date">
8382          1st June 2010
8383       </div>
8384       <div class="body">
8385         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
8386 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
8387 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
8388 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
8389 wait.</p>
8390
8391 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
8392 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
8393 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
8394 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
8395 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
8396 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
8397
8398 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
8399 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
8400 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
8401 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
8402 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
8403 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
8404 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
8405 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
8406
8407 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
8408
8409       </div>
8410       <div class="tags">
8411
8412
8413         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>.
8414
8415
8416       </div>
8417     </div>
8418     <div class="padding"></div>
8419
8420     <div class="entry">
8421       <div class="title">
8422         <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>
8423       </div>
8424       <div class="date">
8425         27th May 2010
8426       </div>
8427       <div class="body">
8428         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
8429 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
8430 issues are known and should be solved:
8431
8432 <p><ul>
8433
8434 <li>The wicd package seen to
8435 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
8436 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
8437 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
8438 seem to be on the case.</li>
8439
8440 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
8441 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
8442 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
8443 maintainer is on the case.</li>
8444
8445 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
8446 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
8447 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
8448 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
8449 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
8450 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
8451 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
8452 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
8453
8454 </ul></p>
8455
8456 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
8457 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
8458 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
8459 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
8460
8461 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
8462 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
8463 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
8464 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
8465
8466 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
8467
8468       </div>
8469       <div class="tags">
8470
8471
8472         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>.
8473
8474
8475       </div>
8476     </div>
8477     <div class="padding"></div>
8478
8479     <div class="entry">
8480       <div class="title">
8481         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
8482       </div>
8483       <div class="date">
8484         22nd May 2010
8485       </div>
8486       <div class="body">
8487         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
8488 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
8489 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
8490 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
8491
8492 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
8493 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
8494 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
8495 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
8496 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
8497 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
8498 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
8499 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
8500 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
8501 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
8502 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
8503 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
8504 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
8505 going to work.</p>
8506
8507 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
8508 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
8509 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
8510 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
8511 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
8512 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
8513 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
8514 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
8515 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
8516 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
8517 Edu.</p>
8518
8519 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
8520 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
8521 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
8522 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
8523 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
8524 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
8525
8526 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
8527 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
8528
8529       </div>
8530       <div class="tags">
8531
8532
8533         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>.
8534
8535
8536       </div>
8537     </div>
8538     <div class="padding"></div>
8539
8540     <div class="entry">
8541       <div class="title">
8542         <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>
8543       </div>
8544       <div class="date">
8545         14th May 2010
8546       </div>
8547       <div class="body">
8548         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
8549 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
8550 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
8551 expected, if I am to believe the
8552 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
8553 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
8554 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
8555 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
8556 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
8557 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
8558 version.</p>
8559
8560 More information about
8561 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
8562 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
8563 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
8564 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
8565
8566 <blockquote><pre>
8567 CONCURRENCY=none
8568 </pre></blockquote>
8569
8570 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
8571 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
8572 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
8573 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
8574
8575       </div>
8576       <div class="tags">
8577
8578
8579         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>.
8580
8581
8582       </div>
8583     </div>
8584     <div class="padding"></div>
8585
8586     <div class="entry">
8587       <div class="title">
8588         <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>
8589       </div>
8590       <div class="date">
8591         14th May 2010
8592       </div>
8593       <div class="body">
8594         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
8595 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
8596 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
8597 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
8598 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
8599 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
8600 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
8601 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
8602
8603 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
8604 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
8605 this on the collector host:</p>
8606
8607 <blockquote><pre>
8608 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
8609 </pre></blockquote>
8610
8611 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
8612 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
8613
8614 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
8615 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
8616 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
8617 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
8618 written yet.</p>
8619
8620       </div>
8621       <div class="tags">
8622
8623
8624         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>.
8625
8626
8627       </div>
8628     </div>
8629     <div class="padding"></div>
8630
8631     <div class="entry">
8632       <div class="title">
8633         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
8634       </div>
8635       <div class="date">
8636         13th May 2010
8637       </div>
8638       <div class="body">
8639         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
8640 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
8641 has been
8642 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
8643
8644 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
8645 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
8646 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
8647 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
8648 based boot system.  Tollef is
8649 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
8650 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
8651 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
8652 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
8653 at the moment do not.</p>
8654
8655 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
8656 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
8657 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
8658 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
8659 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
8660 way forward.</p>
8661
8662 <p>In the mean time, based on the
8663 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
8664 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
8665 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
8666 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
8667 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
8668 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
8669 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
8670 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
8671
8672       </div>
8673       <div class="tags">
8674
8675
8676         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>.
8677
8678
8679       </div>
8680     </div>
8681     <div class="padding"></div>
8682
8683     <div class="entry">
8684       <div class="title">
8685         <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>
8686       </div>
8687       <div class="date">
8688          6th May 2010
8689       </div>
8690       <div class="body">
8691         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
8692 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
8693 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
8694 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
8695 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
8696 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
8697 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
8698
8699 <blockquote><pre>
8700 CONCURRENCY=makefile
8701 </pre></blockquote>
8702
8703 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
8704 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
8705 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
8706 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
8707 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
8708 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
8709 make this happen.</p>
8710
8711 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
8712 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
8713 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
8714 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
8715 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
8716
8717 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
8718 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
8719 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
8720 fix the remaining issues.</p>
8721
8722 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
8723 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
8724 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
8725 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
8726
8727       </div>
8728       <div class="tags">
8729
8730
8731         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>.
8732
8733
8734       </div>
8735     </div>
8736     <div class="padding"></div>
8737
8738     <div class="entry">
8739       <div class="title">
8740         <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>
8741       </div>
8742       <div class="date">
8743         27th July 2009
8744       </div>
8745       <div class="body">
8746         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
8747 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
8748 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
8749 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
8750 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
8751 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
8752 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
8753
8754 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
8755 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
8756 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
8757
8758       </div>
8759       <div class="tags">
8760
8761
8762         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>.
8763
8764
8765       </div>
8766     </div>
8767     <div class="padding"></div>
8768
8769     <div class="entry">
8770       <div class="title">
8771         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
8772       </div>
8773       <div class="date">
8774         22nd July 2009
8775       </div>
8776       <div class="body">
8777         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
8778 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
8779 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
8780 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
8781 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
8782 the package up to date.</p>
8783
8784 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
8785 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
8786 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
8787 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
8788 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
8789 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
8790 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
8791 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
8792 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
8793 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
8794 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
8795 working on the future release.</p>
8796
8797 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
8798 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
8799
8800       </div>
8801       <div class="tags">
8802
8803
8804         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>.
8805
8806
8807       </div>
8808     </div>
8809     <div class="padding"></div>
8810
8811     <div class="entry">
8812       <div class="title">
8813         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
8814       </div>
8815       <div class="date">
8816         24th June 2009
8817       </div>
8818       <div class="body">
8819         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
8820 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
8821 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
8822 funded
8823 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
8824 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
8825 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
8826 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
8827 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
8828 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
8829
8830 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
8831 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
8832 boot:</p>
8833
8834 <ul>
8835
8836 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
8837
8838 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
8839    clock is in UTC.</li>
8840
8841 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
8842    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
8843    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
8844
8845 </ul>
8846
8847 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
8848 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
8849 Villegas</a>.
8850
8851 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
8852 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
8853 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
8854 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
8855 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
8856 using this.</p>
8857
8858 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
8859 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
8860 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
8861 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
8862 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
8863 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
8864 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
8865
8866       </div>
8867       <div class="tags">
8868
8869
8870         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>.
8871
8872
8873       </div>
8874     </div>
8875     <div class="padding"></div>
8876
8877     <div class="entry">
8878       <div class="title">
8879         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
8880       </div>
8881       <div class="date">
8882         17th May 2009
8883       </div>
8884       <div class="body">
8885         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
8886 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
8887 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
8888 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
8889 dager siden kom
8890 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
8891 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
8892 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
8893 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
8894 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
8895
8896 <blockquote>
8897 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
8898 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
8899 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
8900 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
8901 </blockquote>
8902
8903 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
8904 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
8905 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
8906 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
8907 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
8908
8909 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
8910 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
8911 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
8912
8913       </div>
8914       <div class="tags">
8915
8916
8917         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>.
8918
8919
8920       </div>
8921     </div>
8922     <div class="padding"></div>
8923
8924     <div class="entry">
8925       <div class="title">
8926         <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>
8927       </div>
8928       <div class="date">
8929          7th May 2009
8930       </div>
8931       <div class="body">
8932         <p>Kom over
8933 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
8934 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
8935 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
8936 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
8937 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
8938 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
8939 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
8940
8941       </div>
8942       <div class="tags">
8943
8944
8945         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>.
8946
8947
8948       </div>
8949     </div>
8950     <div class="padding"></div>
8951
8952     <div class="entry">
8953       <div class="title">
8954         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
8955       </div>
8956       <div class="date">
8957          2nd May 2009
8958       </div>
8959       <div class="body">
8960         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
8961 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
8962 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
8963 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
8964 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
8965 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
8966 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
8967 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
8968 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
8969 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
8970 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
8971 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
8972 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
8973 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
8974 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
8975 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
8976 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
8977 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
8978 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
8979 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
8980
8981 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
8982 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
8983 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
8984 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
8985 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
8986 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
8987 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
8988 betydelige.</p>
8989
8990       </div>
8991       <div class="tags">
8992
8993
8994         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>.
8995
8996
8997       </div>
8998     </div>
8999     <div class="padding"></div>
9000
9001     <div class="entry">
9002       <div class="title">
9003         <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>
9004       </div>
9005       <div class="date">
9006          2nd May 2009
9007       </div>
9008       <div class="body">
9009         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
9010 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
9011 do not yet know them.</p>
9012
9013 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
9014 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
9015 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
9016 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
9017 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
9018 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
9019 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
9020 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
9021 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
9022 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
9023 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
9024
9025 <p>The second one is
9026 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
9027 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
9028 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
9029 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
9030 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
9031 and the company behind it is running
9032 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
9033 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
9034 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
9035 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
9036 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
9037 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
9038 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
9039 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
9040
9041 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
9042 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
9043 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
9044 surrounded by today.</p>
9045
9046       </div>
9047       <div class="tags">
9048
9049
9050         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>.
9051
9052
9053       </div>
9054     </div>
9055     <div class="padding"></div>
9056
9057     <div class="entry">
9058       <div class="title">
9059         <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>
9060       </div>
9061       <div class="date">
9062         28th April 2009
9063       </div>
9064       <div class="body">
9065         <p>Julien Blache
9066 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
9067 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
9068 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
9069 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
9070 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
9071 properties.</p>
9072
9073       </div>
9074       <div class="tags">
9075
9076
9077         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>.
9078
9079
9080       </div>
9081     </div>
9082     <div class="padding"></div>
9083
9084     <div class="entry">
9085       <div class="title">
9086         <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>
9087       </div>
9088       <div class="date">
9089         30th March 2009
9090       </div>
9091       <div class="body">
9092         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
9093 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
9094 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
9095 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
9096 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
9097 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
9098 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
9099 application.</p>
9100
9101 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
9102 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
9103 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
9104 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
9105 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
9106 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
9107 blocked from doing so.</p>
9108
9109 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
9110 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
9111 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
9112 requirements change.</p>
9113
9114 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
9115 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
9116 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
9117
9118       </div>
9119       <div class="tags">
9120
9121
9122         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>.
9123
9124
9125       </div>
9126     </div>
9127     <div class="padding"></div>
9128
9129     <div class="entry">
9130       <div class="title">
9131         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
9132       </div>
9133       <div class="date">
9134         29th March 2009
9135       </div>
9136       <div class="body">
9137         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
9138 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
9139 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
9140 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
9141 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
9142 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
9143 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
9144 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
9145 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
9146 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
9147 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
9148 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
9149 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
9150 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
9151 now. :)</p>
9152
9153       </div>
9154       <div class="tags">
9155
9156
9157         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>.
9158
9159
9160       </div>
9161     </div>
9162     <div class="padding"></div>
9163
9164     <div class="entry">
9165       <div class="title">
9166         <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>
9167       </div>
9168       <div class="date">
9169         29th March 2009
9170       </div>
9171       <div class="body">
9172         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
9173 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
9174 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
9175 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
9176 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
9177 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
9178
9179 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
9180 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
9181 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
9182 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
9183 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
9184 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
9185 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
9186 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
9187 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
9188 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
9189 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
9190 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
9191 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
9192
9193 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
9194 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
9195 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
9196 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
9197
9198 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
9199 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
9200
9201 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
9202 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
9203 new IETF work group?</p>
9204
9205       </div>
9206       <div class="tags">
9207
9208
9209         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>.
9210
9211
9212       </div>
9213     </div>
9214     <div class="padding"></div>
9215
9216     <div class="entry">
9217       <div class="title">
9218         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
9219       </div>
9220       <div class="date">
9221         15th February 2009
9222       </div>
9223       <div class="body">
9224         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
9225 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
9226 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
9227 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
9228 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
9229 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
9230 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
9231 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
9232 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
9233 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
9234 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
9235 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
9236
9237       </div>
9238       <div class="tags">
9239
9240
9241         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>.
9242
9243
9244       </div>
9245     </div>
9246     <div class="padding"></div>
9247
9248     <div class="entry">
9249       <div class="title">
9250         <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>
9251       </div>
9252       <div class="date">
9253          7th December 2008
9254       </div>
9255       <div class="body">
9256         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
9257 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
9258 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
9259 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
9260 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
9261 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
9262 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
9263 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
9264
9265 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
9266 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
9267 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
9268 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
9269 of these cards.</p>
9270
9271       </div>
9272       <div class="tags">
9273
9274
9275         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>.
9276
9277
9278       </div>
9279     </div>
9280     <div class="padding"></div>
9281
9282     <div class="entry">
9283       <div class="title">
9284         <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>
9285       </div>
9286       <div class="date">
9287         25th November 2008
9288       </div>
9289       <div class="body">
9290         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
9291 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
9292 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
9293 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
9294 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
9295 notes are available on
9296 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
9297 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
9298 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
9299 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
9300 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
9301 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
9302 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
9303 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
9304 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
9305
9306 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
9307 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
9308
9309       </div>
9310       <div class="tags">
9311
9312
9313         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>.
9314
9315
9316       </div>
9317     </div>
9318     <div class="padding"></div>
9319
9320     <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>
9321     <div id="sidebar">
9322
9323
9324
9325 <h2>Archive</h2>
9326 <ul>
9327
9328 <li>2015
9329 <ul>
9330
9331 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
9332
9333 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
9334
9335 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
9336
9337 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
9338
9339 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
9340
9341 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
9342
9343 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
9344
9345 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
9346
9347 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
9348
9349 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
9350
9351 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (5)</a></li>
9352
9353 </ul></li>
9354
9355 <li>2014
9356 <ul>
9357
9358 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
9359
9360 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
9361
9362 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
9363
9364 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
9365
9366 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
9367
9368 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
9369
9370 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
9371
9372 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
9373
9374 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
9375
9376 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
9377
9378 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
9379
9380 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
9381
9382 </ul></li>
9383
9384 <li>2013
9385 <ul>
9386
9387 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
9388
9389 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
9390
9391 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
9392
9393 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
9394
9395 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
9396
9397 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
9398
9399 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
9400
9401 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
9402
9403 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
9404
9405 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
9406
9407 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
9408
9409 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
9410
9411 </ul></li>
9412
9413 <li>2012
9414 <ul>
9415
9416 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
9417
9418 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
9419
9420 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
9421
9422 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
9423
9424 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
9425
9426 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
9427
9428 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
9429
9430 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
9431
9432 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
9433
9434 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
9435
9436 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
9437
9438 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
9439
9440 </ul></li>
9441
9442 <li>2011
9443 <ul>
9444
9445 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
9446
9447 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
9448
9449 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
9450
9451 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
9452
9453 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
9454
9455 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
9456
9457 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
9458
9459 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
9460
9461 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
9462
9463 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
9464
9465 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
9466
9467 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
9468
9469 </ul></li>
9470
9471 <li>2010
9472 <ul>
9473
9474 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
9475
9476 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
9477
9478 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
9479
9480 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
9481
9482 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
9483
9484 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
9485
9486 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
9487
9488 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
9489
9490 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
9491
9492 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
9493
9494 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
9495
9496 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
9497
9498 </ul></li>
9499
9500 <li>2009
9501 <ul>
9502
9503 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
9504
9505 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
9506
9507 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
9508
9509 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
9510
9511 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
9512
9513 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
9514
9515 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
9516
9517 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
9518
9519 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
9520
9521 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
9522
9523 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
9524
9525 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
9526
9527 </ul></li>
9528
9529 <li>2008
9530 <ul>
9531
9532 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
9533
9534 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
9535
9536 </ul></li>
9537
9538 </ul>
9539
9540
9541
9542 <h2>Tags</h2>
9543 <ul>
9544
9545  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
9546
9547  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
9548
9549  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
9550
9551  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
9552
9553  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
9554
9555  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
9556
9557  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
9558
9559  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
9560
9561  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (113)</a></li>
9562
9563  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (153)</a></li>
9564
9565  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
9566
9567  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
9568
9569  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (20)</a></li>
9570
9571  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
9572
9573  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (295)</a></li>
9574
9575  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
9576
9577  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
9578
9579  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (24)</a></li>
9580
9581  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
9582
9583  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
9584
9585  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
9586
9587  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
9588
9589  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
9590
9591  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
9592
9593  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
9594
9595  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
9596
9597  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
9598
9599  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
9600
9601  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
9602
9603  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (36)</a></li>
9604
9605  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (271)</a></li>
9606
9607  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
9608
9609  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (22)</a></li>
9610
9611  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
9612
9613  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (57)</a></li>
9614
9615  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (92)</a></li>
9616
9617  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
9618
9619  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
9620
9621  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
9622
9623  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
9624
9625  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
9626
9627  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
9628
9629  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
9630
9631  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
9632
9633  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (44)</a></li>
9634
9635  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
9636
9637  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
9638
9639  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
9640
9641  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
9642
9643  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
9644
9645  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (36)</a></li>
9646
9647  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
9648
9649  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
9650
9651  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
9652
9653  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (54)</a></li>
9654
9655  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
9656
9657  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (37)</a></li>
9658
9659 </ul>
9660
9661
9662     </div>
9663     <p style="text-align: right">
9664  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
9665 </p>
9666
9667   </body>
9668 </html>