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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 "isenkram".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html">Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         20th December 2016
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
  32 system</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
  33 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
  34 going strong.  It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
  35 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
  36 packages.  It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
  37 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package.  The latter will
  38 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
  39 install to get the dongle working.  It will even provide a button to
  40 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.</p>
  41
  42 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:</p>
  43
  44 <p><pre>
  45 % isenkram-lookup
  46 bluez
  47 cheese
  48 ethtool
  49 fprintd
  50 fprintd-demo
  51 gkrellm-thinkbat
  52 hdapsd
  53 libpam-fprintd
  54 pidgin-blinklight
  55 thinkfan
  56 tlp
  57 tp-smapi-dkms
  58 tp-smapi-source
  59 tpb
  60 %
  61 </pre></p>
  62
  63 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
  64 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
  65 I have all the firmware my machine need:
  66
  67 <p><pre>
  68 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
  69 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
  70 %
  71 </pre></p>
  72
  73 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
  74 packages in Debian with udev rules.  These seem like good candidates
  75 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
  76 several that should be proposed by isenkram.  I have not had time to
  77 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
  78 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.  11 of these
  79 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
  80 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.</p>
  81
  82 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment.  The
  83 <strong>marked packages</strong> are also announcing their hardware
  84 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:</p>
  85
  86 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
  87 <strong>array-info</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
  88 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, <strong>brltty</strong>,
  89 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
  90 <strong>colorhug-client</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
  91 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
  92 fprintd-demo, <strong>galileo</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
  93 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
  94 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
  95 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
  96 <strong>libnxt</strong>, libpam-fprintd, <strong>lomoco</strong>,
  97 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
  98 <strong>nbc</strong>, <strong>nqc</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
  99 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
 100 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
 101 <strong>pymissile</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
 102 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
 103 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
 104 <strong>t2n</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
 105 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
 106 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
 107 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
 108 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
 109 zd1211-firmware</p>
 110
 111 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
 112 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
 113 maintainer to
 114 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
 115 metadata according to the guidelines</a> to provide the information
 116 for everyone.  In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
 117 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.</p>
 118
 119 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
 120 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
 121 card.  See <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #838735</a> for
 122 the details.  I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon.  In
 123 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.</p>
 124
 125       </div>
 126       <div class="tags">
 127
 128
 129         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>.
 130
 131
 132       </div>
 133     </div>
 134     <div class="padding"></div>
 135
 136     <div class="entry">
 137       <div class="title">
 138         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
 139       </div>
 140       <div class="date">
 141          7th October 2016
 142       </div>
 143       <div class="body">
 144         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
 145 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
 146 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
 147 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
 148 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
 149 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
 150 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
 151 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
 152 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
 153 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
 154 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
 155 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
 156 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
 157
 158 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
 159 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
 160 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
 161 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
 162 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
 163 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
 164
 165 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
 166 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
 167 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
 168 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
 169 identifiers.</p>
 170
 171 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
 172 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
 173 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
 174 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
 175 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
 176 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
 177 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
 178 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
 179 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
 180 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
 181 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
 182 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
 183 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
 184 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
 185
 186 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
 187 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
 188 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
 189 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
 190 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
 191 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
 192 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
 193
 194 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
 195 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
 196 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
 197 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
 198 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
 199 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
 200 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
 201 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
 202 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
 203 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
 204 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
 205 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
 206 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
 207 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
 208 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
 209 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
 210 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
 211
 212 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
 213 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
 214 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
 215 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
 216 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
 217 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
 218 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
 219
 220 <p><pre>
 221 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
 222     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
 223 </pre></p>
 224
 225 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
 226 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
 227 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
 228 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
 229 to detect this?</p>
 230
 231 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
 232 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
 233 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
 234 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
 235 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
 236 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
 237 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
 238 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
 239 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
 240 directly if no such class exist.</p>
 241
 242 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
 243 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
 244 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
 245
 246 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
 247 please join us on our IRC channel
 248 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
 249 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
 250 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
 251 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
 252
 253 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 254 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 255 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 256
 257       </div>
 258       <div class="tags">
 259
 260
 261         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>.
 262
 263
 264       </div>
 265     </div>
 266     <div class="padding"></div>
 267
 268     <div class="entry">
 269       <div class="title">
 270         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</a>
 271       </div>
 272       <div class="date">
 273         25th May 2016
 274       </div>
 275       <div class="body">
 276         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
 277 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
 278 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
 279 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
 280 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
 281 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
 282 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
 283 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
 284 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
 285 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
 286 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
 287 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
 288
 289 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
 290 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
 291 is going away and is generally being replaced by
 292 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
 293 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
 294 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
 295 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
 296 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
 297 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
 298 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
 299 and see if it is recognised.</p>
 300
 301 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
 302 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
 303 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
 304
 305 <p><blockquote><pre>
 306 % isenkram-lookup
 307 bluez
 308 cheese
 309 fprintd
 310 fprintd-demo
 311 gkrellm-thinkbat
 312 hdapsd
 313 libpam-fprintd
 314 pidgin-blinklight
 315 thinkfan
 316 tleds
 317 tp-smapi-dkms
 318 tp-smapi-source
 319 tpb
 320 %p
 321 </pre></blockquote></p>
 322
 323 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
 324 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
 325 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
 326 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
 327 See
 328 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
 329 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
 330
 331       </div>
 332       <div class="tags">
 333
 334
 335         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>.
 336
 337
 338       </div>
 339     </div>
 340     <div class="padding"></div>
 341
 342     <div class="entry">
 343       <div class="title">
 344         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
 345       </div>
 346       <div class="date">
 347         20th December 2015
 348       </div>
 349       <div class="body">
 350         <p>Around three years ago, I created
 351 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
 352 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
 353 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
 354 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
 355 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
 356 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
 357 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
 358 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
 359 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
 360 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
 361 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
 362 with.</p>
 363
 364 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
 365 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
 366 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
 367 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
 368 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
 369 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
 370 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
 371 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
 372 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
 373 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
 374 Debian version of appstream.</p>
 375
 376 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
 377 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
 378 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
 379 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
 380 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
 381 how do add the required
 382 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
 383 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
 384 this content:</p>
 385
 386 <blockquote><pre>
 387 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
 388 &lt;component&gt;
 389   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
 390   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
 391   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
 392   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
 393   &lt;description&gt;
 394     &lt;p&gt;
 395       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
 396       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
 397       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
 398       launcher.
 399     &lt;/p&gt;
 400   &lt;/description&gt;
 401   &lt;provides&gt;
 402     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
 403   &lt;/provides&gt;
 404 &lt;/component&gt;
 405 </pre></blockquote>
 406
 407 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
 408 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
 409 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
 410 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
 411 0202.</p>
 412
 413 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
 414 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
 415 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
 416 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
 417 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
 418 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
 419 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
 420 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
 421
 422 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
 423 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
 424 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
 425 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
 426 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
 427
 428 <blockquote><pre>
 429 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
 430 </pre></blockquote>
 431
 432 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
 433 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
 434 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
 435 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
 436 question.</p>
 437
 438 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
 439 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
 440
 441 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
 442 try running this command on the command line:</p>
 443
 444 <blockquote><pre>
 445 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
 446 </pre></blockquote>
 447
 448 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
 449 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
 450 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
 451
 452       </div>
 453       <div class="tags">
 454
 455
 456         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>.
 457
 458
 459       </div>
 460     </div>
 461     <div class="padding"></div>
 462
 463     <div class="entry">
 464       <div class="title">
 465         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
 466       </div>
 467       <div class="date">
 468         17th October 2014
 469       </div>
 470       <div class="body">
 471         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
 472 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
 473 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
 474 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
 475 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
 476 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
 477 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
 478
 479 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
 480 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
 481 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
 482 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
 483 of this story.)</p>
 484
 485 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
 486 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
 487 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
 488 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
 489 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
 490 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
 491 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
 492 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
 493 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
 494 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
 495
 496 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
 497 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
 498 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
 499 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
 500
 501 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
 502 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
 503
 504 <p><blockquote><pre>
 505 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
 506 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
 507 </pre></blockquote></p>
 508
 509 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
 510 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
 511 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
 512 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
 513 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
 514 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
 515 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
 516 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
 517
 518 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
 519 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
 520
 521 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
 522 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
 523 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
 524 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
 525 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
 526
 527 <p><blockquote><pre>
 528 Task: isenkram-packages
 529 Section: hardware
 530 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 531  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 532  proposed.
 533 Test-new-install: show show
 534 Relevance: 8
 535 Packages: for-current-hardware
 536
 537 Task: isenkram-firmware
 538 Section: hardware
 539 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 540  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
 541  packages are proposed.
 542 Test-new-install: mark show
 543 Relevance: 8
 544 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
 545 </pre></blockquote></p>
 546
 547 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
 548 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
 549 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
 550 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
 551 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
 552
 553 <p><blockquote><pre>
 554 #!/bin/sh
 555 #
 556 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
 557 export PATH
 558 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 559 </pre></blockquote></p>
 560
 561 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
 562 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
 563
 564 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
 565 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
 566 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
 567 install.</p>
 568
 569 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
 570 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
 571 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
 572
 573       </div>
 574       <div class="tags">
 575
 576
 577         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>.
 578
 579
 580       </div>
 581     </div>
 582     <div class="padding"></div>
 583
 584     <div class="entry">
 585       <div class="title">
 586         <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>
 587       </div>
 588       <div class="date">
 589         23rd April 2014
 590       </div>
 591       <div class="body">
 592         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
 593 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
 594 So I implemented one, using
 595 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
 596 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
 597 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
 598 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
 599 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
 600 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
 601
 602 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
 603 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
 604 packages to install.  The first part is in
 605 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
 606 this:</p>
 607
 608 <p><blockquote><pre>
 609 Task: isenkram
 610 Section: hardware
 611 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
 612  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
 613  proposed.
 614 Test-new-install: mark show
 615 Relevance: 8
 616 Packages: for-current-hardware
 617 </pre></blockquote></p>
 618
 619 <p>The second part is in
 620 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
 621 this:</p>
 622
 623 <p><blockquote><pre>
 624 #!/bin/sh
 625 #
 626 (
 627     isenkram-lookup
 628     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 629 ) | sort -u
 630 </pre></blockquote></p>
 631
 632 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
 633 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
 634 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
 635 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
 636 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
 637 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
 638
 639 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
 640 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
 641 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
 642 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
 643 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
 644 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
 645 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
 646 the python-apt code (bug
 647 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
 648 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
 649 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
 650 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
 651 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
 652 unstable today.</p>
 653
 654 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
 655 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
 656 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
 657 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
 658 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
 659 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
 660 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
 661 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
 662 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
 663
 664 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
 665 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
 666 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
 667 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
 668 package.  See also
 669 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
 670 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
 671 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
 672 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
 673
 674       </div>
 675       <div class="tags">
 676
 677
 678         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>.
 679
 680
 681       </div>
 682     </div>
 683     <div class="padding"></div>
 684
 685     <div class="entry">
 686       <div class="title">
 687         <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>
 688       </div>
 689       <div class="date">
 690         25th June 2013
 691       </div>
 692       <div class="body">
 693         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
 694 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
 695 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
 696 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
 697 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
 698 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
 699 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
 700 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
 701 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
 702 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
 703 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
 704
 705 <p><pre>
 706 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
 707 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
 708 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
 709 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
 710 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
 711 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
 712 firmware-ipw2x00
 713 firmware-ipw2x00
 714 Preconfiguring packages ...
 715 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
 716 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
 717 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
 718 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
 719 #
 720 </pre></p>
 721
 722 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
 723 printed instead:</p>
 724
 725 <p><pre>
 726 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
 727 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
 728 #
 729 </pre></p>
 730
 731 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
 732 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
 733
 734 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
 735 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
 736 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
 737 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
 738 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
 739 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
 740 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
 741 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
 742 machine.</p>
 743
 744 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
 745 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
 746 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
 747 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
 748 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
 749 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
 750
 751       </div>
 752       <div class="tags">
 753
 754
 755         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>.
 756
 757
 758       </div>
 759     </div>
 760     <div class="padding"></div>
 761
 762     <div class="entry">
 763       <div class="title">
 764         <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>
 765       </div>
 766       <div class="date">
 767          3rd April 2013
 768       </div>
 769       <div class="body">
 770         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
 771 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
 772 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
 773 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
 774
 775 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
 776 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
 777 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
 778 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
 779 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
 780 BTS. :)</p>
 781
 782       </div>
 783       <div class="tags">
 784
 785
 786         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>.
 787
 788
 789       </div>
 790     </div>
 791     <div class="padding"></div>
 792
 793     <div class="entry">
 794       <div class="title">
 795         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
 796       </div>
 797       <div class="date">
 798         22nd January 2013
 799       </div>
 800       <div class="body">
 801         <p>Yesterday, I
 802 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
 803 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
 804 pluggable hardware devices, which I
 805 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
 806 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
 807 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
 808 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
 809 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
 810 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
 811 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
 812 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
 813 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
 814 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
 815
 816 <pre>
 817 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
 818 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
 819 </pre>
 820
 821 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
 822 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
 823 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
 824 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
 825
 826 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
 827 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
 828 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
 829 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
 830 word.</p>
 831
 832 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
 833 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
 834 process.</p>
 835
 836 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
 837 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
 838
 839       </div>
 840       <div class="tags">
 841
 842
 843         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>.
 844
 845
 846       </div>
 847     </div>
 848     <div class="padding"></div>
 849
 850     <div class="entry">
 851       <div class="title">
 852         <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>
 853       </div>
 854       <div class="date">
 855         21st January 2013
 856       </div>
 857       <div class="body">
 858         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
 859 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
 860 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
 861 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
 862 it, fetch the
 863 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
 864 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
 865 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
 866 autostart script.</p>
 867
 868 <p>The design is simple:</p>
 869
 870 <ul>
 871
 872 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
 873 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
 874
 875 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
 876 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
 877 initially did.</li>
 878
 879 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
 880 the APT database, a database
 881 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
 882 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
 883
 884 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
 885 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
 886 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
 887 package or packages.</li>
 888
 889 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
 890 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
 891
 892 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
 893 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
 894
 895 </ul>
 896
 897 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
 898 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
 899 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
 900 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
 901
 902 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
 903 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
 904 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
 905 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
 906 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
 907
 908 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
 909 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
 910 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
 911 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
 912 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
 913 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
 914 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
 915 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
 916
 917 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
 918 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
 919 '<tt>svn checkout
 920 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
 921 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
 922 devscripts package.</p>
 923
 924 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
 925 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
 926 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
 927 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
 928 instructions</a> for details.</p>
 929
 930       </div>
 931       <div class="tags">
 932
 933
 934         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>.
 935
 936
 937       </div>
 938     </div>
 939     <div class="padding"></div>
 940
 941     <div class="entry">
 942       <div class="title">
 943         <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>
 944       </div>
 945       <div class="date">
 946         15th January 2013
 947       </div>
 948       <div class="body">
 949         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
 950 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
 951 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
 952 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
 953 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
 954 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
 955 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
 956 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
 957 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
 958 packages.</p>
 959
 960 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
 961 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
 962 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
 963 modalias.</p>
 964
 965 <p><blockquote>
 966 Package: package-name
 967 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
 968 </blockquote></p>
 969
 970 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
 971 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
 972
 973 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
 974 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
 975
 976 <p><blockquote>
 977 Package: cheese
 978 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
 979 </blockquote></p>
 980
 981 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
 982 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
 983
 984 <p><blockquote>
 985 Package: pcmciautils
 986 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
 987 </blockquote></p>
 988
 989 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
 990 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
 991
 992 <p><blockquote>
 993 Package: colorhug-client
 994 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
 995 </blockquote></p>
 996
 997 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
 998 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
 999 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
1000
1001 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
1002 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
1003 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
1004 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
1005 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
1006 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
1007 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
1008 Raring.</p>
1009
1010 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
1011 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
1012 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
1013 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
1014 try the
1015 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
1016 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
1017 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
1018 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
1019
1020 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
1021 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
1022
1023 <p><blockquote>
1024 % ./hw-support-lookup
1025 <br>yubikey-personalization
1026 <br>%
1027 </blockquote></p>
1028
1029 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
1030 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
1031
1032 <p><blockquote>
1033 % ./hw-support-lookup
1034 <br>pcmciautils
1035 <br>%
1036 </blockquote></p>
1037
1038 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
1039 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
1040 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
1041
1042 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
1043 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
1044 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
1045 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
1046 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
1047 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
1048 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
1049 see if it work.</p>
1050
1051 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1052 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1053 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1054 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
1055
1056       </div>
1057       <div class="tags">
1058
1059
1060         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>.
1061
1062
1063       </div>
1064     </div>
1065     <div class="padding"></div>
1066
1067     <div class="entry">
1068       <div class="title">
1069         <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>
1070       </div>
1071       <div class="date">
1072         14th January 2013
1073       </div>
1074       <div class="body">
1075         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
1076 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
1077 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
1078 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
1079 in
1080 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1081 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
1082
1083 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
1084
1085 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
1086 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
1087 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
1088 &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;,
1089 &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
1090 &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;.
1091
1092 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
1093 this shell script:</p>
1094
1095 <pre>
1096 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
1097 </pre>
1098
1099 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
1100 using modinfo:</p>
1101
1102 <pre>
1103 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
1104 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
1105 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
1106 %
1107 </pre>
1108
1109 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
1110
1111 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
1112 Bridge memory controller:</p>
1113
1114 <p><blockquote>
1115 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
1116 </blockquote></p>
1117
1118 <p>This represent these values:</p>
1119
1120 <pre>
1121  v   00008086  (vendor)
1122  d   00002770  (device)
1123  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
1124  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
1125  bc  06        (bus class)
1126  sc  00        (bus subclass)
1127  i   00        (interface)
1128 </pre>
1129
1130 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
1131 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
1132 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
1133 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
1134
1135 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
1136 means.</p>
1137
1138 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
1139
1140 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
1141 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
1142
1143 <p><blockquote>
1144 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
1145 </blockquote></p>
1146
1147 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
1148
1149 <pre>
1150  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
1151  p    0001  (device product)
1152  d    0206  (bcddevice)
1153  dc     09  (device class)
1154  dsc    00  (device subclass)
1155  dp     00  (device protocol)
1156  ic     09  (interface class)
1157  isc    00  (interface subclass)
1158  ip     00  (interface protocol)
1159 </pre>
1160
1161 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
1162 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
1163 these alias entries show up:</p>
1164
1165 <p><blockquote>
1166 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
1167 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
1168 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
1169 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
1170 </blockquote></p>
1171
1172 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
1173 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
1174 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
1175
1176 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
1177
1178 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
1179 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
1180
1181 <p><blockquote>
1182 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1183 </blockquote></p>
1184
1185 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
1186
1187 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
1188
1189 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
1190 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
1191 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
1192
1193 <p><blockquote>
1194 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
1195 </blockquote></p>
1196
1197 <p>The values present are</p>
1198
1199 <pre>
1200  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
1201  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
1202  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
1203  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
1204  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
1205  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
1206  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
1207  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
1208  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
1209  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
1210  ct   10             (chassis type)
1211  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
1212 </pre>
1213
1214 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
1215 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
1216
1217 <pre>
1218   3 Desktop
1219   4 Low Profile Desktop
1220   5 Pizza Box
1221   6 Mini Tower
1222   7 Tower
1223   8 Portable
1224   9 Laptop
1225  10 Notebook
1226  11 Hand Held
1227  12 Docking Station
1228  13 All In One
1229  14 Sub Notebook
1230  15 Space-saving
1231  16 Lunch Box
1232  17 Main Server Chassis
1233  18 Expansion Chassis
1234  19 Sub Chassis
1235  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
1236  21 Peripheral Chassis
1237  22 RAID Chassis
1238  23 Rack Mount Chassis
1239  24 Sealed-case PC
1240  25 Multi-system
1241  26 CompactPCI
1242  27 AdvancedTCA
1243  28 Blade
1244  29 Blade Enclosing
1245 </pre>
1246
1247 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
1248 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
1249 claim it is a desktop.</p>
1250
1251 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
1252
1253 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
1254 test machine:</p>
1255
1256 <p><blockquote>
1257 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
1258 </blockquote></p>
1259
1260 <p>The values present are</p>
1261
1262 <pre>
1263   ty  01  (type)
1264   pr  00  (prototype)
1265   id  00  (id)
1266   ex  00  (extra)
1267 </pre>
1268
1269 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
1270 the valid values are.</p>
1271
1272 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
1273
1274 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
1275 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
1276 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
1277 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
1278 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
1279 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
1280 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
1281
1282 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
1283
1284 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
1285 one can use the following shell script:</p>
1286
1287 <pre>
1288   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
1289     echo "$id" ; \
1290     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
1291   done
1292 </pre>
1293
1294 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
1295 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
1296
1297 <pre>
1298   acpi:ACPI0003:
1299     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
1300   acpi:device:
1301   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
1302   acpi:IBM0068:
1303     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
1304     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
1305     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
1306     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
1307   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1308     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
1309     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
1310     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
1311   [...]
1312 </pre>
1313
1314 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1315 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1316 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1317 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
1318
1319 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
1320 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
1321 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
1322
1323       </div>
1324       <div class="tags">
1325
1326
1327         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>.
1328
1329
1330       </div>
1331     </div>
1332     <div class="padding"></div>
1333
1334     <div class="entry">
1335       <div class="title">
1336         <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>
1337       </div>
1338       <div class="date">
1339         10th January 2013
1340       </div>
1341       <div class="body">
1342         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
1343 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
1344 Launcher and updated the Debian package
1345 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
1346 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
1347 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
1348 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
1349 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
1350 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
1351 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
1352 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
1353 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
1354 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
1355 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
1356 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
1357 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
1358 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
1359 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
1360
1361       </div>
1362       <div class="tags">
1363
1364
1365         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>.
1366
1367
1368       </div>
1369     </div>
1370     <div class="padding"></div>
1371
1372     <div class="entry">
1373       <div class="title">
1374         <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>
1375       </div>
1376       <div class="date">
1377          9th January 2013
1378       </div>
1379       <div class="body">
1380         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
1381 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
1382 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
1383 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
1384 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
1385 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
1386 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
1387 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
1388 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
1389 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
1390 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
1391
1392 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
1393 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
1394 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
1395 simple:
1396
1397 <ul>
1398
1399 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
1400   starting when a user log in.</li>
1401
1402 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
1403   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
1404
1405 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
1406   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
1407   packages.</li>
1408
1409 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
1410   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
1411
1412 </ul>
1413
1414 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
1415 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
1416 discover database to find packages and
1417 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
1418 packages.</p>
1419
1420 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
1421 draft package is now checked into
1422 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1423 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
1424 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
1425 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
1426 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
1427 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
1428 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
1429 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
1430 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
1431 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
1432 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
1433 because of the freeze).</p>
1434
1435 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
1436 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
1437 inserted):</p>
1438
1439 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
1440
1441 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
1442 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
1443 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
1444
1445 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
1446 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
1447 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
1448 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
1449 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
1450 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
1451 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
1452
1453 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
1454 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
1455 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
1456 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
1457 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
1458 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
1459 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
1460 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
1461 not be installed?</p>
1462
1463 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
1464 please send me an email. :)</p>
1465
1466       </div>
1467       <div class="tags">
1468
1469
1470         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>.
1471
1472
1473       </div>
1474     </div>
1475     <div class="padding"></div>
1476
1477     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="isenkram.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
1478     <div id="sidebar">
1479
1480
1481
1482 <h2>Archive</h2>
1483 <ul>
1484
1485 <li>2016
1486 <ul>
1487
1488 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
1489
1490 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
1491
1492 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
1493
1494 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
1495
1496 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
1497
1498 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
1499
1500 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
1501
1502 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
1503
1504 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
1505
1506 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
1507
1508 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
1509
1510 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (4)</a></li>
1511
1512 </ul></li>
1513
1514 <li>2015
1515 <ul>
1516
1517 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
1518
1519 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
1520
1521 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
1522
1523 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
1524
1525 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
1526
1527 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
1528
1529 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
1530
1531 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
1532
1533 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
1534
1535 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
1536
1537 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
1538
1539 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
1540
1541 </ul></li>
1542
1543 <li>2014
1544 <ul>
1545
1546 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
1547
1548 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
1549
1550 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
1551
1552 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
1553
1554 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
1555
1556 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
1557
1558 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
1559
1560 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
1561
1562 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
1563
1564 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
1565
1566 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
1567
1568 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
1569
1570 </ul></li>
1571
1572 <li>2013
1573 <ul>
1574
1575 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
1576
1577 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
1578
1579 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
1580
1581 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
1582
1583 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
1584
1585 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
1586
1587 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
1588
1589 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
1590
1591 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
1592
1593 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
1594
1595 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
1596
1597 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
1598
1599 </ul></li>
1600
1601 <li>2012
1602 <ul>
1603
1604 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
1605
1606 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
1607
1608 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
1609
1610 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
1611
1612 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
1613
1614 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
1615
1616 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
1617
1618 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
1619
1620 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
1621
1622 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
1623
1624 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
1625
1626 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
1627
1628 </ul></li>
1629
1630 <li>2011
1631 <ul>
1632
1633 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
1634
1635 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
1636
1637 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
1638
1639 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
1640
1641 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
1642
1643 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
1644
1645 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
1646
1647 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
1648
1649 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
1650
1651 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
1652
1653 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
1654
1655 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
1656
1657 </ul></li>
1658
1659 <li>2010
1660 <ul>
1661
1662 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
1663
1664 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
1665
1666 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
1667
1668 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
1669
1670 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
1671
1672 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
1673
1674 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
1675
1676 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
1677
1678 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
1679
1680 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
1681
1682 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
1683
1684 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
1685
1686 </ul></li>
1687
1688 <li>2009
1689 <ul>
1690
1691 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
1692
1693 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
1694
1695 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
1696
1697 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
1698
1699 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
1700
1701 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
1702
1703 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
1704
1705 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
1706
1707 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
1708
1709 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
1710
1711 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
1712
1713 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
1714
1715 </ul></li>
1716
1717 <li>2008
1718 <ul>
1719
1720 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
1721
1722 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
1723
1724 </ul></li>
1725
1726 </ul>
1727
1728
1729
1730 <h2>Tags</h2>
1731 <ul>
1732
1733  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
1734
1735  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
1736
1737  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
1738
1739  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
1740
1741  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
1742
1743  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (16)</a></li>
1744
1745  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
1746
1747  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
1748
1749  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (143)</a></li>
1750
1751  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (158)</a></li>
1752
1753  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
1754
1755  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (16)</a></li>
1756
1757  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (23)</a></li>
1758
1759  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
1760
1761  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (335)</a></li>
1762
1763  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
1764
1765  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
1766
1767  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (29)</a></li>
1768
1769  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
1770
1771  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (18)</a></li>
1772
1773  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
1774
1775  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
1776
1777  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (14)</a></li>
1778
1779  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
1780
1781  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
1782
1783  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
1784
1785  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
1786
1787  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
1788
1789  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
1790
1791  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (39)</a></li>
1792
1793  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (9)</a></li>
1794
1795  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (285)</a></li>
1796
1797  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (182)</a></li>
1798
1799  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (26)</a></li>
1800
1801  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
1802
1803  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (62)</a></li>
1804
1805  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (96)</a></li>
1806
1807  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
1808
1809  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
1810
1811  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
1812
1813  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
1814
1815  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (10)</a></li>
1816
1817  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
1818
1819  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (5)</a></li>
1820
1821  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
1822
1823  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (52)</a></li>
1824
1825  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
1826
1827  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
1828
1829  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (49)</a></li>
1830
1831  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (5)</a></li>
1832
1833  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
1834
1835  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (44)</a></li>
1836
1837  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
1838
1839  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
1840
1841  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
1842
1843  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (59)</a></li>
1844
1845  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
1846
1847  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
1848
1849 </ul>
1850
1851
1852     </div>
1853     <p style="text-align: right">
1854  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
1855 </p>
1856
1857   </body>
1858 </html>