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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/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>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         17th July 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Today I switched to
  32 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
  33 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
  34 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
  35 <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
  36 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
  37 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
  38 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
  39 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
  40 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
  41 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
  42 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
  43 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
  44 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
  45 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
  46 station from now on.</p>
  47
  48 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
  49 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
  50 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
  51 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
  52 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
  53 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
  54 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
  55 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
  56 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
  57 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
  58 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
  59 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
  60
  61 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
  62 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
  63 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
  64 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
  65 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
  66 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
  67 parameters are tuned:</p>
  68
  69 <ul>
  70
  71 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
  72     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
  73
  74 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
  75     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
  76     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
  77
  78 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
  79     systems.</li>
  80
  81 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
  82     /etc/fstab.</li>
  83
  84 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
  85
  86 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
  87     cron.daily).</li>
  88
  89 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
  90     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
  91
  92 </ul>
  93
  94 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
  95 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
  96 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
  97 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
  98 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
  99 from getting the data on the disk (see
 100 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
 101 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
 102 right thing to do.</p>
 103
 104 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
 105 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
 106 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
 107
 108 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
 109 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
 110 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
 111 instead of during my work.</p>
 112
 113 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
 114 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
 115
 116 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
 117 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
 118 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
 119
 120 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
 121 there.</p>
 122
 123 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
 124 as far as I know, the only solution is to replace the disk.  It might
 125 be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of the Lenovo
 126 firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so without
 127 approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the disk
 128 until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks back.</p>
 129
 130       </div>
 131       <div class="tags">
 132
 133
 134         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>.
 135
 136
 137       </div>
 138     </div>
 139     <div class="padding"></div>
 140
 141     <div class="entry">
 142       <div class="title">
 143         <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>
 144       </div>
 145       <div class="date">
 146         10th July 2013
 147       </div>
 148       <div class="body">
 149         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
 150 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
 151 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
 152 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
 153 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
 154 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
 155 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
 156 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
 157
 158 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
 159 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
 160 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
 161 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
 162 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
 163 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
 164 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
 165 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
 166 lock up when I download a new
 167 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
 168 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
 169 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
 170
 171 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
 172 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
 173 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
 174 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
 175 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
 176 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
 177
 178 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
 179 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
 180 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
 181 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
 182 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
 183 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
 184
 185 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
 186 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
 187 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
 188 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
 189 exist).</p>
 190
 191       </div>
 192       <div class="tags">
 193
 194
 195         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>.
 196
 197
 198       </div>
 199     </div>
 200     <div class="padding"></div>
 201
 202     <div class="entry">
 203       <div class="title">
 204         <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>
 205       </div>
 206       <div class="date">
 207          9th July 2013
 208       </div>
 209       <div class="body">
 210         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
 211 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
 212 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
 213 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
 214 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 215 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
 216 Bitraf</a>.</p>
 217
 218 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
 219 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
 220 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
 221 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
 222 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
 223
 224       </div>
 225       <div class="tags">
 226
 227
 228         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>.
 229
 230
 231       </div>
 232     </div>
 233     <div class="padding"></div>
 234
 235     <div class="entry">
 236       <div class="title">
 237         <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>
 238       </div>
 239       <div class="date">
 240          5th July 2013
 241       </div>
 242       <div class="body">
 243         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
 244 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
 245 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
 246 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
 247 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
 248 ended up picking a
 249 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
 250 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
 251 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
 252 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
 253 on that below.</p>
 254
 255 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
 256 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
 257 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
 258 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
 259 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
 260 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
 261 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
 262 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
 263 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
 264
 265 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
 266 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
 267 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
 268 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
 269 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
 270 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
 271 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
 272
 273 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
 274 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
 275
 276 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
 277 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
 278 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
 279 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
 280 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
 281 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
 282 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
 283 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
 284 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
 285 kernel developers as
 286 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
 287 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
 288 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
 289 Lenovo forums, both for
 290 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
 291 2012-11-10</a> and for
 292 <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
 293 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
 294 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
 295 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
 296 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
 297 There is even a
 298 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
 299 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
 300 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
 301
 302 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
 303 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
 304 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
 305 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
 306 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
 307 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
 308 fixed. :)</p>
 309
 310       </div>
 311       <div class="tags">
 312
 313
 314         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>.
 315
 316
 317       </div>
 318     </div>
 319     <div class="padding"></div>
 320
 321     <div class="entry">
 322       <div class="title">
 323         <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>
 324       </div>
 325       <div class="date">
 326          4th July 2013
 327       </div>
 328       <div class="body">
 329         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
 330 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
 331 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
 332 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
 333 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
 334 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
 335 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
 336 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
 337 with an expencive door stop.</p>
 338
 339 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
 340 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
 341 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
 342 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
 343 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
 344 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
 345 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
 346
 347 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
 348 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
 349 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
 350 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
 351 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
 352 new laptop now. :)</p>
 353
 354 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
 355
 356       </div>
 357       <div class="tags">
 358
 359
 360         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>.
 361
 362
 363       </div>
 364     </div>
 365     <div class="padding"></div>
 366
 367     <div class="entry">
 368       <div class="title">
 369         <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>
 370       </div>
 371       <div class="date">
 372         25th June 2013
 373       </div>
 374       <div class="body">
 375         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
 376 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
 377 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
 378 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
 379 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
 380 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
 381 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
 382 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
 383 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
 384 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
 385 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
 386
 387 <p><pre>
 388 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
 389 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
 390 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
 391 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
 392 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
 393 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
 394 firmware-ipw2x00
 395 firmware-ipw2x00
 396 Preconfiguring packages ...
 397 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
 398 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
 399 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
 400 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
 401 #
 402 </pre></p>
 403
 404 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
 405 printed instead:</p>
 406
 407 <p><pre>
 408 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
 409 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
 410 #
 411 </pre></p>
 412
 413 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
 414 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
 415
 416 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
 417 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
 418 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
 419 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
 420 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
 421 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
 422 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
 423 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
 424 machine.</p>
 425
 426 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
 427 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
 428 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
 429 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
 430 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
 431 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
 432
 433       </div>
 434       <div class="tags">
 435
 436
 437         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>.
 438
 439
 440       </div>
 441     </div>
 442     <div class="padding"></div>
 443
 444     <div class="entry">
 445       <div class="title">
 446         <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>
 447       </div>
 448       <div class="date">
 449         11th June 2013
 450       </div>
 451       <div class="body">
 452         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
 453 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
 454 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
 455 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
 456 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
 457 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
 458 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
 459 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
 460 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
 461 i915 driver used by the
 462 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
 463 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
 464
 465 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
 466 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
 467 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
 468 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
 469 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
 470
 471 <pre>
 472 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
 473 update-initramfs -u -k all
 474 </pre>
 475
 476 <p>Since March 2012 there is
 477 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
 478 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
 479 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
 480 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
 481 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
 482 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
 483 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
 484 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
 485 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
 486 number.</p>
 487
 488 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
 489 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
 490
 491 <p><pre>
 492 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
 493     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
 494     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
 495  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
 496  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
 497     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
 498  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
 499     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 500  Latency: 0
 501  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
 502  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
 503  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 504  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
 505  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
 506  Capabilities: <access denied>
 507  Kernel driver in use: i915
 508 </pre></p>
 509
 510 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
 511
 512 <p><pre>
 513 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
 514        ...
 515         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
 516         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
 517        ...
 518 }
 519 </pre></p>
 520
 521 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
 522 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
 523 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
 524 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
 525 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
 526 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
 527 yet shown up in
 528 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
 529 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
 530 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
 531 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
 532 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
 533 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
 534
 535 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
 536 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
 537 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
 538 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
 539 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
 540 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
 541 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
 542 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
 543 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
 544 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
 545 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
 546 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
 547
 548       </div>
 549       <div class="tags">
 550
 551
 552         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>.
 553
 554
 555       </div>
 556     </div>
 557     <div class="padding"></div>
 558
 559     <div class="entry">
 560       <div class="title">
 561         <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>
 562       </div>
 563       <div class="date">
 564         27th May 2013
 565       </div>
 566       <div class="body">
 567         <p>Two days ago, I asked
 568 <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
 569 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
 570 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
 571 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
 572 and Windows 8.</p>
 573
 574 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
 575 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
 576 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
 577 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
 578 enough to tell.</p>
 579
 580 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
 581 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
 582 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
 583 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
 584 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
 585 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
 586 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
 587 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
 588 to follow.</p>
 589
 590 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
 591 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
 592 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
 593 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
 594 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
 595 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
 596 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
 597 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
 598
 599 <p>I've updated the
 600 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
 601 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
 602 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
 603 machine.</p>
 604
 605 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
 606 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
 607
 608       </div>
 609       <div class="tags">
 610
 611
 612         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>.
 613
 614
 615       </div>
 616     </div>
 617     <div class="padding"></div>
 618
 619     <div class="entry">
 620       <div class="title">
 621         <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>
 622       </div>
 623       <div class="date">
 624         25th May 2013
 625       </div>
 626       <div class="body">
 627         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
 628 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
 629 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
 630 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
 631 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
 632 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
 633
 634 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
 635 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
 636 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
 637 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
 638 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
 639 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
 640 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
 641 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
 642 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
 643 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
 644
 645 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
 646 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
 647 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
 648 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
 649 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
 650 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
 651
 652 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
 653 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
 654 on new Laptops?</p>
 655
 656       </div>
 657       <div class="tags">
 658
 659
 660         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>.
 661
 662
 663       </div>
 664     </div>
 665     <div class="padding"></div>
 666
 667     <div class="entry">
 668       <div class="title">
 669         <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>
 670       </div>
 671       <div class="date">
 672         17th May 2013
 673       </div>
 674       <div class="body">
 675         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
 676 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
 677 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
 678 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
 679 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
 680 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
 681 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
 682 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
 683 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
 684 donate some money</a>.
 685
 686 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
 687 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
 688 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
 689 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
 690 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
 691
 692 <p>The script,
 693 <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/>
 694 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
 695 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
 696 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
 697
 698 <ol>
 699
 700 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
 701 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
 702 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
 703     our configuration.</li>
 704 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
 705     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
 706     according to the profile specified in the config above,
 707     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
 708 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
 709     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
 710 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
 711
 712 </ol>
 713
 714 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
 715 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
 716 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
 717 the needed packages.</p>
 718
 719 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
 720 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
 721 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
 722 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
 723 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
 724 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
 725
 726 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
 727 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
 728 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
 729
 730 <p><pre>
 731 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
 732 DESKTOP="lxde"
 733 </pre></p>
 734
 735 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
 736 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
 737 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
 738 boot.</p>
 739
 740       </div>
 741       <div class="tags">
 742
 743
 744         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>.
 745
 746
 747       </div>
 748     </div>
 749     <div class="padding"></div>
 750
 751     <div class="entry">
 752       <div class="title">
 753         <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>
 754       </div>
 755       <div class="date">
 756         11th May 2013
 757       </div>
 758       <div class="body">
 759         <P>In January,
 760 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
 761 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
 762 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
 763 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
 764 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
 765 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
 766 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
 767 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
 768 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
 769 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
 770 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
 771 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
 772
 773 <p><table>
 774 <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>
 775 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
 776 <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>
 777 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
 778 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
 779 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
 780 <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>
 781 <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>
 782 <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>
 783 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
 784 </table></p>
 785
 786 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
 787 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
 788 available in experimental.</p>
 789
 790 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
 791 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
 792 for LEGO designers.</p>
 793
 794       </div>
 795       <div class="tags">
 796
 797
 798         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>.
 799
 800
 801       </div>
 802     </div>
 803     <div class="padding"></div>
 804
 805     <div class="entry">
 806       <div class="title">
 807         <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>
 808       </div>
 809       <div class="date">
 810          5th May 2013
 811       </div>
 812       <div class="body">
 813         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
 814 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
 815 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
 816 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
 817 soon.</p>
 818
 819 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
 820 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
 821 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
 822 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
 823 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
 824 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
 825 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
 826 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
 827 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
 828 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
 829 Edu.</a>
 830
 831 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
 832 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
 833 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
 834 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
 835 follow.<p>
 836
 837       </div>
 838       <div class="tags">
 839
 840
 841         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>.
 842
 843
 844       </div>
 845     </div>
 846     <div class="padding"></div>
 847
 848     <div class="entry">
 849       <div class="title">
 850         <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>
 851       </div>
 852       <div class="date">
 853          3rd April 2013
 854       </div>
 855       <div class="body">
 856         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
 857 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
 858 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
 859 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
 860
 861 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
 862 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
 863 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
 864 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
 865 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
 866 BTS. :)</p>
 867
 868       </div>
 869       <div class="tags">
 870
 871
 872         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>.
 873
 874
 875       </div>
 876     </div>
 877     <div class="padding"></div>
 878
 879     <div class="entry">
 880       <div class="title">
 881         <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>
 882       </div>
 883       <div class="date">
 884          2nd February 2013
 885       </div>
 886       <div class="body">
 887         <p>My
 888 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
 889 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
 890 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
 891 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
 892 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
 893 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
 894 version too.</p>
 895
 896 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
 897 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
 898 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
 899 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
 900 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
 901 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
 902 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
 903 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
 904
 905 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
 906 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
 907 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
 908 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
 909 it. :)</p>
 910
 911 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 912 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 913 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 914
 915       </div>
 916       <div class="tags">
 917
 918
 919         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>.
 920
 921
 922       </div>
 923     </div>
 924     <div class="padding"></div>
 925
 926     <div class="entry">
 927       <div class="title">
 928         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
 929       </div>
 930       <div class="date">
 931         22nd January 2013
 932       </div>
 933       <div class="body">
 934         <p>Yesterday, I
 935 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
 936 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
 937 pluggable hardware devices, which I
 938 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
 939 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
 940 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
 941 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
 942 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
 943 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
 944 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
 945 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
 946 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
 947 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
 948
 949 <pre>
 950 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
 951 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
 952 </pre>
 953
 954 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
 955 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
 956 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
 957 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
 958
 959 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
 960 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
 961 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
 962 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
 963 word.</p>
 964
 965 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
 966 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
 967 process.</p>
 968
 969 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
 970 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
 971
 972       </div>
 973       <div class="tags">
 974
 975
 976         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>.
 977
 978
 979       </div>
 980     </div>
 981     <div class="padding"></div>
 982
 983     <div class="entry">
 984       <div class="title">
 985         <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>
 986       </div>
 987       <div class="date">
 988         21st January 2013
 989       </div>
 990       <div class="body">
 991         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
 992 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
 993 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
 994 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
 995 it, fetch the
 996 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
 997 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
 998 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
 999 autostart script.</p>
1000
1001 <p>The design is simple:</p>
1002
1003 <ul>
1004
1005 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
1006 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
1007
1008 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
1009 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
1010 initially did.</li>
1011
1012 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
1013 the APT database, a database
1014 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
1015 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
1016
1017 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
1018 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
1019 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
1020 package or packages.</li>
1021
1022 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
1023 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
1024
1025 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
1026 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
1027
1028 </ul>
1029
1030 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
1031 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
1032 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
1033 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
1034
1035 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
1036 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
1037 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
1038 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
1039 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
1040
1041 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
1042 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
1043 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
1044 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
1045 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
1046 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
1047 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
1048 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
1049
1050 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
1051 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
1052 '<tt>svn checkout
1053 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
1054 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
1055 devscripts package.</p>
1056
1057 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
1058 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
1059 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
1060 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
1061 instructions</a> for details.</p>
1062
1063       </div>
1064       <div class="tags">
1065
1066
1067         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>.
1068
1069
1070       </div>
1071     </div>
1072     <div class="padding"></div>
1073
1074     <div class="entry">
1075       <div class="title">
1076         <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>
1077       </div>
1078       <div class="date">
1079         19th January 2013
1080       </div>
1081       <div class="body">
1082         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
1083 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
1084 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
1085 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
1086 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
1087 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
1088 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
1089 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
1090 not a durable solution.
1091
1092 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
1093 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
1094
1095 <ul>
1096
1097 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
1098   than A4).</li>
1099 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
1100 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
1101 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
1102 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
1103 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
1104 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
1105 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
1106 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
1107 size).</li>
1108 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
1109   X.org packages.</li>
1110 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
1111   the time).
1112
1113 </ul>
1114
1115 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
1116 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
1117 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
1118 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
1119 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
1120 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
1121 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
1122 still be useful.</p>
1123
1124 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
1125 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
1126 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
1127 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
1128 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
1129 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
1130
1131       </div>
1132       <div class="tags">
1133
1134
1135         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>.
1136
1137
1138       </div>
1139     </div>
1140     <div class="padding"></div>
1141
1142     <div class="entry">
1143       <div class="title">
1144         <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>
1145       </div>
1146       <div class="date">
1147         18th January 2013
1148       </div>
1149       <div class="body">
1150         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
1151 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
1152 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
1153 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
1154 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
1155 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
1156 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
1157
1158 <pre>
1159 #!/usr/bin/python
1160 import sys
1161 import apt
1162 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1163     cache = apt.Cache()
1164     cache.open(None)
1165     thepkgs = []
1166     for pkg in cache:
1167         version = pkg.candidate
1168         if version is None:
1169             version = pkg.installed
1170         if version is None:
1171             continue
1172         record = version.record
1173         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
1174             continue
1175         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
1176         for t in mime_types:
1177             t = t.rstrip().strip()
1178             if t == mimetype:
1179                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
1180     return thepkgs
1181 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
1182 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
1183     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
1184 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
1185 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
1186     print "  %s" %pkg
1187 </pre>
1188
1189 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
1190
1191 <pre>
1192 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
1193 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
1194   gecko-mediaplayer
1195 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
1196 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
1197   browser-plugin-gnash
1198 %
1199 </pre>
1200
1201 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
1202 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
1203 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
1204 anyone working on adding it?</p>
1205
1206 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
1207 request for icweasel support for this feature is
1208 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
1209 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
1210 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
1211 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
1212
1213       </div>
1214       <div class="tags">
1215
1216
1217         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>.
1218
1219
1220       </div>
1221     </div>
1222     <div class="padding"></div>
1223
1224     <div class="entry">
1225       <div class="title">
1226         <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>
1227       </div>
1228       <div class="date">
1229         16th January 2013
1230       </div>
1231       <div class="body">
1232         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
1233 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
1234 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
1235 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
1236 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
1237 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
1238 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
1239 downloaded by the browser.</p>
1240
1241 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
1242 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
1243 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
1244 can be found on the
1245 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
1246 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
1247 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
1248 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
1249 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
1250
1251 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
1252
1253 <pre>
1254   count MIME type
1255   ----- -----------------------
1256      32 text/plain
1257      30 audio/mpeg
1258      29 image/png
1259      28 image/jpeg
1260      27 application/ogg
1261      26 audio/x-mp3
1262      25 image/tiff
1263      25 image/gif
1264      22 image/bmp
1265      22 audio/x-wav
1266      20 audio/x-flac
1267      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1268      18 video/x-ms-asf
1269      18 audio/x-musepack
1270      18 audio/x-mpeg
1271      18 application/x-ogg
1272      17 video/mpeg
1273      17 audio/x-scpls
1274      17 audio/ogg
1275      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1276 </pre>
1277
1278 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
1279
1280 <pre>
1281   count MIME type
1282   ----- -----------------------
1283      33 text/plain
1284      32 image/png
1285      32 image/jpeg
1286      29 audio/mpeg
1287      27 image/gif
1288      26 image/tiff
1289      26 application/ogg
1290      25 audio/x-mp3
1291      22 image/bmp
1292      21 audio/x-wav
1293      19 audio/x-mpegurl
1294      19 audio/x-mpeg
1295      18 video/mpeg
1296      18 audio/x-scpls
1297      18 audio/x-flac
1298      18 application/x-ogg
1299      17 video/x-ms-asf
1300      17 text/html
1301      17 audio/x-musepack
1302      16 image/x-xbitmap
1303 </pre>
1304
1305 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
1306
1307 <pre>
1308   count MIME type
1309   ----- -----------------------
1310      31 text/plain
1311      31 image/png
1312      31 image/jpeg
1313      29 audio/mpeg
1314      28 application/ogg
1315      27 image/gif
1316      26 image/tiff
1317      26 audio/x-mp3
1318      23 audio/x-wav
1319      22 image/bmp
1320      21 audio/x-flac
1321      20 audio/x-mpegurl
1322      19 audio/x-mpeg
1323      18 video/x-ms-asf
1324      18 video/mpeg
1325      18 audio/x-scpls
1326      18 application/x-ogg
1327      17 audio/x-musepack
1328      16 video/x-ms-wmv
1329      16 video/x-msvideo
1330 </pre>
1331
1332 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
1333 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
1334 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
1335 issues.</p>
1336
1337 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
1338 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
1339
1340       </div>
1341       <div class="tags">
1342
1343
1344         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>.
1345
1346
1347       </div>
1348     </div>
1349     <div class="padding"></div>
1350
1351     <div class="entry">
1352       <div class="title">
1353         <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>
1354       </div>
1355       <div class="date">
1356         15th January 2013
1357       </div>
1358       <div class="body">
1359         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
1360 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
1361 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
1362 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
1363 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
1364 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
1365 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
1366 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
1367 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
1368 packages.</p>
1369
1370 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
1371 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
1372 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
1373 modalias.</p>
1374
1375 <p><blockquote>
1376 Package: package-name
1377 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
1378 </blockquote></p>
1379
1380 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
1381 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
1382
1383 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
1384 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
1385
1386 <p><blockquote>
1387 Package: cheese
1388 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
1389 </blockquote></p>
1390
1391 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
1392 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
1393
1394 <p><blockquote>
1395 Package: pcmciautils
1396 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
1397 </blockquote></p>
1398
1399 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
1400 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
1401
1402 <p><blockquote>
1403 Package: colorhug-client
1404 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
1405 </blockquote></p>
1406
1407 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
1408 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
1409 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
1410
1411 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
1412 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
1413 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
1414 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
1415 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
1416 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
1417 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
1418 Raring.</p>
1419
1420 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
1421 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
1422 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
1423 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
1424 try the
1425 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
1426 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
1427 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
1428 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
1429
1430 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
1431 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
1432
1433 <p><blockquote>
1434 % ./hw-support-lookup
1435 <br>yubikey-personalization
1436 <br>%
1437 </blockquote></p>
1438
1439 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
1440 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
1441
1442 <p><blockquote>
1443 % ./hw-support-lookup
1444 <br>pcmciautils
1445 <br>%
1446 </blockquote></p>
1447
1448 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
1449 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
1450 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
1451
1452 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
1453 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
1454 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
1455 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
1456 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
1457 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
1458 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
1459 see if it work.</p>
1460
1461 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1462 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1463 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1464 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</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     <div class="entry">
1478       <div class="title">
1479         <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>
1480       </div>
1481       <div class="date">
1482         14th January 2013
1483       </div>
1484       <div class="body">
1485         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
1486 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
1487 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
1488 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
1489 in
1490 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1491 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
1492
1493 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
1494
1495 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
1496 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
1497 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
1498 &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;,
1499 &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
1500 &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;.
1501
1502 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
1503 this shell script:</p>
1504
1505 <pre>
1506 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
1507 </pre>
1508
1509 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
1510 using modinfo:</p>
1511
1512 <pre>
1513 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
1514 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
1515 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
1516 %
1517 </pre>
1518
1519 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
1520
1521 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
1522 Bridge memory controller:</p>
1523
1524 <p><blockquote>
1525 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
1526 </blockquote></p>
1527
1528 <p>This represent these values:</p>
1529
1530 <pre>
1531  v   00008086  (vendor)
1532  d   00002770  (device)
1533  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
1534  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
1535  bc  06        (bus class)
1536  sc  00        (bus subclass)
1537  i   00        (interface)
1538 </pre>
1539
1540 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
1541 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
1542 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
1543 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
1544
1545 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
1546 means.</p>
1547
1548 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
1549
1550 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
1551 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
1552
1553 <p><blockquote>
1554 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
1555 </blockquote></p>
1556
1557 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
1558
1559 <pre>
1560  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
1561  p    0001  (device product)
1562  d    0206  (bcddevice)
1563  dc     09  (device class)
1564  dsc    00  (device subclass)
1565  dp     00  (device protocol)
1566  ic     09  (interface class)
1567  isc    00  (interface subclass)
1568  ip     00  (interface protocol)
1569 </pre>
1570
1571 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
1572 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
1573 these alias entries show up:</p>
1574
1575 <p><blockquote>
1576 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
1577 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
1578 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
1579 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
1580 </blockquote></p>
1581
1582 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
1583 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
1584 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
1585
1586 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
1587
1588 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
1589 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
1590
1591 <p><blockquote>
1592 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1593 </blockquote></p>
1594
1595 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
1596
1597 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
1598
1599 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
1600 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
1601 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
1602
1603 <p><blockquote>
1604 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
1605 </blockquote></p>
1606
1607 <p>The values present are</p>
1608
1609 <pre>
1610  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
1611  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
1612  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
1613  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
1614  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
1615  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
1616  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
1617  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
1618  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
1619  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
1620  ct   10             (chassis type)
1621  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
1622 </pre>
1623
1624 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
1625 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
1626
1627 <pre>
1628   3 Desktop
1629   4 Low Profile Desktop
1630   5 Pizza Box
1631   6 Mini Tower
1632   7 Tower
1633   8 Portable
1634   9 Laptop
1635  10 Notebook
1636  11 Hand Held
1637  12 Docking Station
1638  13 All In One
1639  14 Sub Notebook
1640  15 Space-saving
1641  16 Lunch Box
1642  17 Main Server Chassis
1643  18 Expansion Chassis
1644  19 Sub Chassis
1645  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
1646  21 Peripheral Chassis
1647  22 RAID Chassis
1648  23 Rack Mount Chassis
1649  24 Sealed-case PC
1650  25 Multi-system
1651  26 CompactPCI
1652  27 AdvancedTCA
1653  28 Blade
1654  29 Blade Enclosing
1655 </pre>
1656
1657 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
1658 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
1659 claim it is a desktop.</p>
1660
1661 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
1662
1663 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
1664 test machine:</p>
1665
1666 <p><blockquote>
1667 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
1668 </blockquote></p>
1669
1670 <p>The values present are</p>
1671
1672 <pre>
1673   ty  01  (type)
1674   pr  00  (prototype)
1675   id  00  (id)
1676   ex  00  (extra)
1677 </pre>
1678
1679 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
1680 the valid values are.</p>
1681
1682 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
1683
1684 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
1685 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
1686 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
1687 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
1688 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
1689 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
1690 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
1691
1692 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
1693
1694 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
1695 one can use the following shell script:</p>
1696
1697 <pre>
1698   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
1699     echo "$id" ; \
1700     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
1701   done
1702 </pre>
1703
1704 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
1705 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
1706
1707 <pre>
1708   acpi:ACPI0003:
1709     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
1710   acpi:device:
1711   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
1712   acpi:IBM0068:
1713     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
1714     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
1715     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
1716     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
1717   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
1718     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
1719     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
1720     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
1721   [...]
1722 </pre>
1723
1724 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
1725 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
1726 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
1727 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
1728
1729 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
1730 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
1731 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
1732
1733       </div>
1734       <div class="tags">
1735
1736
1737         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>.
1738
1739
1740       </div>
1741     </div>
1742     <div class="padding"></div>
1743
1744     <div class="entry">
1745       <div class="title">
1746         <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>
1747       </div>
1748       <div class="date">
1749         10th January 2013
1750       </div>
1751       <div class="body">
1752         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
1753 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
1754 Launcher and updated the Debian package
1755 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
1756 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
1757 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
1758 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
1759 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
1760 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
1761 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
1762 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
1763 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
1764 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
1765 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
1766 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
1767 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
1768 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
1769 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
1770
1771       </div>
1772       <div class="tags">
1773
1774
1775         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>.
1776
1777
1778       </div>
1779     </div>
1780     <div class="padding"></div>
1781
1782     <div class="entry">
1783       <div class="title">
1784         <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>
1785       </div>
1786       <div class="date">
1787          9th January 2013
1788       </div>
1789       <div class="body">
1790         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
1791 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
1792 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
1793 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
1794 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
1795 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
1796 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
1797 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
1798 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
1799 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
1800 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
1801
1802 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
1803 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
1804 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
1805 simple:
1806
1807 <ul>
1808
1809 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
1810   starting when a user log in.</li>
1811
1812 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
1813   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
1814
1815 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
1816   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
1817   packages.</li>
1818
1819 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
1820   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
1821
1822 </ul>
1823
1824 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
1825 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
1826 discover database to find packages and
1827 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
1828 packages.</p>
1829
1830 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
1831 draft package is now checked into
1832 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
1833 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
1834 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
1835 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
1836 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
1837 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
1838 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
1839 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
1840 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
1841 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
1842 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
1843 because of the freeze).</p>
1844
1845 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
1846 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
1847 inserted):</p>
1848
1849 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
1850
1851 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
1852 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
1853 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
1854
1855 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
1856 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
1857 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
1858 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
1859 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
1860 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
1861 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
1862
1863 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
1864 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
1865 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
1866 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
1867 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
1868 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
1869 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
1870 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
1871 not be installed?</p>
1872
1873 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
1874 please send me an email. :)</p>
1875
1876       </div>
1877       <div class="tags">
1878
1879
1880         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>.
1881
1882
1883       </div>
1884     </div>
1885     <div class="padding"></div>
1886
1887     <div class="entry">
1888       <div class="title">
1889         <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>
1890       </div>
1891       <div class="date">
1892          2nd January 2013
1893       </div>
1894       <div class="body">
1895         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
1896 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
1897 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
1898 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
1899 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
1900 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
1901 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
1902 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
1903 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
1904 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
1905
1906 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
1907 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
1908 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
1909
1910       </div>
1911       <div class="tags">
1912
1913
1914         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>.
1915
1916
1917       </div>
1918     </div>
1919     <div class="padding"></div>
1920
1921     <div class="entry">
1922       <div class="title">
1923         <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>
1924       </div>
1925       <div class="date">
1926         25th December 2012
1927       </div>
1928       <div class="body">
1929         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
1930 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
1931
1932 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
1933 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
1934 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
1935 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
1936 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
1937 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
1938 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
1939 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
1940 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
1941 name.</p>
1942
1943 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
1944 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
1945 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
1946
1947 <blockquote><pre>
1948 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
1949 cd bitcoin
1950 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
1951 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
1952 </pre></blockquote>
1953
1954 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
1955 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
1956 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
1957 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
1958 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
1959 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
1960 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
1961 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
1962 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
1963
1964 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1965 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1966 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1967
1968       </div>
1969       <div class="tags">
1970
1971
1972         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>.
1973
1974
1975       </div>
1976     </div>
1977     <div class="padding"></div>
1978
1979     <div class="entry">
1980       <div class="title">
1981         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
1982       </div>
1983       <div class="date">
1984         21st December 2012
1985       </div>
1986       <div class="body">
1987         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
1988 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
1989 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
1990 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
1991 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
1992 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
1993 is now maintained by a
1994 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
1995 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
1996 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
1997 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
1998 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
1999 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
2000 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
2001 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
2002 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
2003 Corallo in a
2004 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
2005 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
2006 Debian package.</p>
2007
2008 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
2009 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
2010 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
2011 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
2012 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
2013 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
2014 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
2015 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
2016 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
2017 new version to unstable.
2018
2019 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
2020 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
2021 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
2022 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
2023 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
2024 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
2025 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
2026 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
2027 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
2028 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
2029 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
2030 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
2031 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
2032 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
2033 have not tested them.</p>
2034
2035 <p>My
2036 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
2037 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
2038 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
2039 years ago, as can be
2040 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
2041 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
2042 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
2043 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
2044 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
2045 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
2046 the same address as last time,
2047 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2048
2049       </div>
2050       <div class="tags">
2051
2052
2053         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>.
2054
2055
2056       </div>
2057     </div>
2058     <div class="padding"></div>
2059
2060     <div class="entry">
2061       <div class="title">
2062         <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>
2063       </div>
2064       <div class="date">
2065          7th September 2012
2066       </div>
2067       <div class="body">
2068         <p>As I
2069 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
2070 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
2071 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
2072 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
2073 repository for the project</a>.</p>
2074
2075 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
2076 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
2077 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
2078 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
2079
2080 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
2081 PostScript formats at
2082 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
2083 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
2084
2085       </div>
2086       <div class="tags">
2087
2088
2089         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>.
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/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
2099       </div>
2100       <div class="date">
2101         16th August 2012
2102       </div>
2103       <div class="body">
2104         <p>I dag fyller
2105 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
2106 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
2107 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
2108
2109       </div>
2110       <div class="tags">
2111
2112
2113         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>.
2114
2115
2116       </div>
2117     </div>
2118     <div class="padding"></div>
2119
2120     <div class="entry">
2121       <div class="title">
2122         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
2123       </div>
2124       <div class="date">
2125         24th June 2012
2126       </div>
2127       <div class="body">
2128         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
2129 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
2130 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
2131 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
2132 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
2133 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
2134 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
2135 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
2136 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
2137 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
2138 missing in my book.</p>
2139
2140 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
2141 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
2142 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
2143 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
2144 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
2145 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
2146 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
2147
2148       </div>
2149       <div class="tags">
2150
2151
2152         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>.
2153
2154
2155       </div>
2156     </div>
2157     <div class="padding"></div>
2158
2159     <div class="entry">
2160       <div class="title">
2161         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
2162       </div>
2163       <div class="date">
2164         21st November 2011
2165       </div>
2166       <div class="body">
2167         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
2168 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
2169 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
2170 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
2171 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
2172 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
2173 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
2174 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
2175 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
2176 the tools to do so.</p>
2177
2178 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
2179 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
2180 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
2181 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
2182
2183 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
2184 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
2185 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
2186 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
2187 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
2188 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
2189 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
2190 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
2191
2192 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
2193 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
2194 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
2195
2196 <p><pre>
2197 #!/usr/bin/perl
2198 use strict;
2199 use warnings;
2200 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
2201 BEGIN {
2202     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
2203     my %rhelmodules = (
2204         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
2205         );
2206     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
2207         eval "use $module;";
2208         if ($@) {
2209             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
2210             system("yum install -y $pkg");
2211             eval "use $module;";
2212         }
2213     }
2214 }
2215 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
2216
2217 upgrade_dell();
2218
2219 exit 0;
2220
2221 sub run_firmware_script {
2222     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
2223     unless ($script) {
2224         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
2225         exit 1
2226     }
2227     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
2228
2229     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
2230         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
2231     } else {
2232         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
2233     }
2234 }
2235
2236 sub run_firmware_scripts {
2237     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
2238     # Run firmware packages
2239     for my $dir (@dirs) {
2240         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
2241         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
2242         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
2243             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
2244             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
2245         }
2246         closedir $dh;
2247     }
2248 }
2249
2250 sub download {
2251     my $url = shift;
2252     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
2253     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
2254 }
2255
2256 sub upgrade_dell {
2257     my @dirs;
2258     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
2259     chomp $product;
2260
2261     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
2262
2263         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
2264         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
2265
2266         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
2267             CLEANUP => 1
2268             );
2269         chdir($tmpdir);
2270         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
2271         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
2272         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
2273         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
2274         my $fwopts = "-q";
2275         if (@paths) {
2276             for my $url (@paths) {
2277                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
2278             }
2279             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
2280         } else {
2281             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
2282             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
2283         }
2284         chdir('/');
2285     } else {
2286         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
2287         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
2288     }
2289 }
2290
2291 sub fetch_dell_fw {
2292     my $path = shift;
2293     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
2294     download($url);
2295 }
2296
2297 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
2298 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
2299 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
2300 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
2301     my $filename = shift;
2302
2303     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
2304     chomp $product;
2305     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
2306
2307     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
2308
2309     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
2310     my @paths;
2311     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
2312         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
2313         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
2314         my $oscode;
2315         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
2316             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
2317         } else {
2318             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
2319         }
2320         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
2321         {
2322             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
2323         }
2324     }
2325     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
2326         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
2327
2328         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
2329         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
2330
2331         my $cpath = $component->{path};
2332         for my $path (@paths) {
2333             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
2334                 push(@paths, $cpath);
2335             }
2336         }
2337     }
2338     return @paths;
2339 }
2340 </pre>
2341
2342 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
2343 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
2344 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
2345 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
2346 outdated.</p>
2347
2348       </div>
2349       <div class="tags">
2350
2351
2352         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>.
2353
2354
2355       </div>
2356     </div>
2357     <div class="padding"></div>
2358
2359     <div class="entry">
2360       <div class="title">
2361         <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>
2362       </div>
2363       <div class="date">
2364          4th August 2011
2365       </div>
2366       <div class="body">
2367         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
2368 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
2369 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
2370 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
2371 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
2372 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
2373 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
2374 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
2375 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
2376
2377 <p><blockquote>
2378 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
2379 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
2380 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
2381 </blockquote></p>
2382
2383 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
2384 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
2385 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
2386 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
2387 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
2388 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
2389 hard to explain.</p>
2390
2391 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
2392 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
2393 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
2394 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
2395 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
2396 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
2397 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
2398 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
2399 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
2400 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
2401 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
2402 mode).</p>
2403
2404 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
2405 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
2406 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
2407 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
2408 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
2409 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
2410 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
2411 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
2412 after visiting single user mode.</p>
2413
2414 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
2415 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
2416 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
2417 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
2418 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
2419 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
2420 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
2421 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
2422
2423 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
2424 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
2425 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
2426
2427       </div>
2428       <div class="tags">
2429
2430
2431         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>.
2432
2433
2434       </div>
2435     </div>
2436     <div class="padding"></div>
2437
2438     <div class="entry">
2439       <div class="title">
2440         <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>
2441       </div>
2442       <div class="date">
2443         30th July 2011
2444       </div>
2445       <div class="body">
2446         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
2447 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
2448 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
2449 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
2450 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
2451 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
2452 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
2453 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
2454 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
2455 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
2456 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
2457 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
2458 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
2459
2460 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
2461 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
2462 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
2463 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
2464 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
2465 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
2466 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
2467 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
2468 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
2469
2470 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
2471 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
2472 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
2473 is presented.</p>
2474
2475 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
2476 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
2477 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
2478 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
2479 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
2480 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
2481 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
2482 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
2483 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
2484 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
2485 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
2486 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
2487 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
2488 find time to push this forward.</p>
2489
2490       </div>
2491       <div class="tags">
2492
2493
2494         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>.
2495
2496
2497       </div>
2498     </div>
2499     <div class="padding"></div>
2500
2501     <div class="entry">
2502       <div class="title">
2503         <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>
2504       </div>
2505       <div class="date">
2506         29th July 2011
2507       </div>
2508       <div class="body">
2509         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
2510 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
2511 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
2512 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
2513 issues.</p>
2514
2515 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
2516 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
2517 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
2518
2519 <ol>
2520
2521 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
2522 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
2523 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
2524 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
2525 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
2526 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
2527 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
2528 Debian.</li>
2529
2530 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
2531 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
2532 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
2533 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
2534 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
2535 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
2536 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
2537 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
2538 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
2539 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
2540 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
2541 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
2542 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
2543
2544 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
2545 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
2546 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
2547 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
2548 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
2549 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
2550 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
2551 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
2552 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
2553 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
2554
2555 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
2556 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
2557 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
2558 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
2559 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
2560 latter behaviour.</li>
2561
2562 </ol>
2563
2564 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
2565 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
2566 it do not matter much.</p>
2567
2568 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
2569 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
2570 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
2571
2572       </div>
2573       <div class="tags">
2574
2575
2576         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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
2577
2578
2579       </div>
2580     </div>
2581     <div class="padding"></div>
2582
2583     <div class="entry">
2584       <div class="title">
2585         <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>
2586       </div>
2587       <div class="date">
2588         26th July 2011
2589       </div>
2590       <div class="body">
2591         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
2592 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
2593 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
2594 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
2595 security support for a few years.</p>
2596
2597 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
2598 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
2599 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
2600 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
2601 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
2602 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
2603 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
2604 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
2605 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
2606 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
2607 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
2608 easier in the future.</p>
2609
2610 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
2611 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
2612 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
2613 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
2614 do not have time for.</p>
2615
2616       </div>
2617       <div class="tags">
2618
2619
2620         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>.
2621
2622
2623       </div>
2624     </div>
2625     <div class="padding"></div>
2626
2627     <div class="entry">
2628       <div class="title">
2629         <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>
2630       </div>
2631       <div class="date">
2632          3rd April 2011
2633       </div>
2634       <div class="body">
2635         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
2636 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
2637 update in English.</p>
2638
2639 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
2640 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
2641 of the British service
2642 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
2643 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
2644 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
2645 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
2646 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
2647 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
2648 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
2649 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
2650 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
2651 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
2652 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
2653 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
2654 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
2655
2656 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
2657 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
2658 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
2659 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
2660 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
2661 public infrastructure.</p>
2662
2663 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
2664 such service?</p>
2665
2666       </div>
2667       <div class="tags">
2668
2669
2670         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>.
2671
2672
2673       </div>
2674     </div>
2675     <div class="padding"></div>
2676
2677     <div class="entry">
2678       <div class="title">
2679         <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>
2680       </div>
2681       <div class="date">
2682         28th January 2011
2683       </div>
2684       <div class="body">
2685         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
2686 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
2687 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
2688 available on the Internet, and check our locally
2689 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
2690 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
2691 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
2692 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
2693 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
2694 out which security holes were present in our free software
2695 collection.</p>
2696
2697 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
2698 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
2699 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
2700 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
2701 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
2702 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
2703 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
2704 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
2705 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
2706 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
2707 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
2708 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
2709 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
2710 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
2711 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
2712 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
2713
2714 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
2715 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
2716 check out, one could look up
2717 <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
2718 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
2719 The most recent one is
2720 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
2721 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
2722 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
2723
2724 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
2725 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
2726 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
2727 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
2728 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
2729 security issues out.</p>
2730
2731 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
2732 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
2733 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
2734 RHEL is providing
2735 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
2736 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
2737 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
2738
2739 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
2740 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
2741 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
2742 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
2743 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
2744 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
2745 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
2746 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
2747 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
2748 established soon.</p>
2749
2750 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
2751 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
2752 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
2753 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
2754 for their packages.</p>
2755
2756       </div>
2757       <div class="tags">
2758
2759
2760         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>.
2761
2762
2763       </div>
2764     </div>
2765     <div class="padding"></div>
2766
2767     <div class="entry">
2768       <div class="title">
2769         <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>
2770       </div>
2771       <div class="date">
2772         23rd January 2011
2773       </div>
2774       <div class="body">
2775         <p>In the
2776 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
2777 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
2778 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
2779 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
2780 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
2781 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
2782 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
2783 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
2784 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
2785 one of my machines like this:</p>
2786
2787 <pre>
2788 loaded modules:
2789 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
2790 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
2791 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
2792 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
2793 10de:03ec pata_amd
2794 10de:03f6 sata_nv
2795 1022:1103 k8temp
2796 109e:036e bttv
2797 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
2798 11ab:4364 sky2
2799 </pre>
2800
2801 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
2802 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
2803
2804 <pre>
2805 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
2806     echo loaded pci modules:
2807     (
2808         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
2809         for address in * ; do
2810             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
2811                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
2812                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
2813                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
2814                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
2815                     echo "$id $module"
2816                 fi
2817             fi
2818         done
2819     )
2820     echo
2821 fi
2822 </pre>
2823
2824 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
2825 mappings:</p>
2826
2827 <pre>
2828 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
2829     echo loaded usb modules:
2830     (
2831         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
2832         for address in * ; do
2833             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
2834                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
2835                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
2836                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
2837                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
2838                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
2839                         echo "$id $module"
2840                     fi
2841                 fi
2842             fi
2843         done
2844     )
2845     echo
2846 fi
2847 </pre>
2848
2849 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
2850 well.</p>
2851
2852       </div>
2853       <div class="tags">
2854
2855
2856         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>.
2857
2858
2859       </div>
2860     </div>
2861     <div class="padding"></div>
2862
2863     <div class="entry">
2864       <div class="title">
2865         <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>
2866       </div>
2867       <div class="date">
2868         22nd December 2010
2869       </div>
2870       <div class="body">
2871         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
2872 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
2873 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
2874 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
2875 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
2876 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
2877 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
2878 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
2879 university.</p>
2880
2881 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
2882 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
2883 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
2884 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
2885 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
2886 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
2887 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
2888 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
2889
2890 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
2891 I perform on a new model.</p>
2892
2893 <ul>
2894
2895 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
2896 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
2897 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
2898
2899 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
2900 installation, X.org is working.</li>
2901
2902 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
2903 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
2904 reported by the program.</li>
2905
2906 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
2907 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
2908 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
2909 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
2910 normally test this by playing
2911 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
2912 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
2913
2914 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
2915 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
2916
2917 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
2918 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
2919
2920 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
2921 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
2922
2923 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
2924 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
2925 few.</li>
2926
2927 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
2928 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
2929 notice this.</li>
2930
2931 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
2932 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
2933 resume.</li>
2934
2935 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
2936 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
2937 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
2938 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
2939 not.</li>
2940
2941 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
2942 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
2943 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
2944 existence.</li>
2945
2946 </ul>
2947
2948 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
2949 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
2950 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
2951 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
2952 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
2953 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
2954 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
2955 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
2956
2957       </div>
2958       <div class="tags">
2959
2960
2961         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>.
2962
2963
2964       </div>
2965     </div>
2966     <div class="padding"></div>
2967
2968     <div class="entry">
2969       <div class="title">
2970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
2971       </div>
2972       <div class="date">
2973         11th December 2010
2974       </div>
2975       <div class="body">
2976         <p>As I continue to explore
2977 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
2978 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
2979 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
2980
2981 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
2982 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
2983 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
2984 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
2985 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
2986 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
2987 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
2988 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
2989 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
2990 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
2991 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
2992 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
2993 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
2994 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
2995 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
2996 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
2997 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
2998 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
2999 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
3000 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
3001
3002 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
3003 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
3004 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
3005 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
3006 If the Skolelinux foundation
3007 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
3008 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
3009 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
3010 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
3011 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
3012 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
3013 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
3014 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
3015
3016 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
3017 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
3018 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
3019 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
3020 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
3021 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
3022 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
3023 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
3024 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
3025 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
3026 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
3027 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
3028 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
3029 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
3030 currencies.</p>
3031
3032 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
3033 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
3034 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
3035 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
3036 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
3037 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
3038 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
3039 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
3040 BitCoins.  Check out
3041 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
3042 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
3043 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
3044 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
3045 yet.</p>
3046
3047 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
3048 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
3049 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
3050 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
3051 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
3052
3053       </div>
3054       <div class="tags">
3055
3056
3057         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>.
3058
3059
3060       </div>
3061     </div>
3062     <div class="padding"></div>
3063
3064     <div class="entry">
3065       <div class="title">
3066         <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>
3067       </div>
3068       <div class="date">
3069         10th December 2010
3070       </div>
3071       <div class="body">
3072         <p>With this weeks lawless
3073 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
3074 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
3075 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
3076 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
3077 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
3078 A blog post from
3079 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
3080 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
3081 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
3082 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
3083 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
3084 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
3085 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
3086
3087 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
3088 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
3089 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
3090 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
3091 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
3092 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
3093 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
3094 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
3095 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
3096 Debian</a> soon.</p>
3097
3098 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
3099 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
3100 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
3101 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
3102 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
3103 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
3104 you can even get
3105 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
3106 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
3107 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
3108 on the current exchange rates.</p>
3109
3110 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
3111 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
3112 donations to the address
3113 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
3114
3115       </div>
3116       <div class="tags">
3117
3118
3119         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>.
3120
3121
3122       </div>
3123     </div>
3124     <div class="padding"></div>
3125
3126     <div class="entry">
3127       <div class="title">
3128         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
3129       </div>
3130       <div class="date">
3131         27th November 2010
3132       </div>
3133       <div class="body">
3134         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
3135 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
3136 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
3137 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
3138 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
3139 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
3140 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
3141 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
3142
3143 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
3144 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
3145 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
3146 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
3147 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
3148 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
3149 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
3150 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
3151 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
3152 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
3153 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
3154
3155 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
3156 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
3157 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
3158 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
3159 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
3160 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
3161 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
3162 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
3163 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
3164 what is going on.</p>
3165
3166       </div>
3167       <div class="tags">
3168
3169
3170         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>.
3171
3172
3173       </div>
3174     </div>
3175     <div class="padding"></div>
3176
3177     <div class="entry">
3178       <div class="title">
3179         <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>
3180       </div>
3181       <div class="date">
3182         22nd November 2010
3183       </div>
3184       <div class="body">
3185         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
3186 upgrade testing of the
3187 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
3188 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
3189 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
3190 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
3191
3192 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
3193
3194 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3195
3196 <blockquote><p>
3197   apache2.2-bin
3198   aptdaemon
3199   baobab
3200   binfmt-support
3201   browser-plugin-gnash
3202   cheese-common
3203   cli-common
3204   cups-pk-helper
3205   dmz-cursor-theme
3206   empathy
3207   empathy-common
3208   freedesktop-sound-theme
3209   freeglut3
3210   gconf-defaults-service
3211   gdm-themes
3212   gedit-plugins
3213   geoclue
3214   geoclue-hostip
3215   geoclue-localnet
3216   geoclue-manual
3217   geoclue-yahoo
3218   gnash
3219   gnash-common
3220   gnome
3221   gnome-backgrounds
3222   gnome-cards-data
3223   gnome-codec-install
3224   gnome-core
3225   gnome-desktop-environment
3226   gnome-disk-utility
3227   gnome-screenshot
3228   gnome-search-tool
3229   gnome-session-canberra
3230   gnome-system-log
3231   gnome-themes-extras
3232   gnome-themes-more
3233   gnome-user-share
3234   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
3235   gstreamer0.10-tools
3236   gtk2-engines
3237   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
3238   gtk2-engines-smooth
3239   hamster-applet
3240   libapache2-mod-dnssd
3241   libapr1
3242   libaprutil1
3243   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
3244   libaprutil1-ldap
3245   libart2.0-cil
3246   libboost-date-time1.42.0
3247   libboost-python1.42.0
3248   libboost-thread1.42.0
3249   libchamplain-0.4-0
3250   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
3251   libcheese-gtk18
3252   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
3253   libcryptui0
3254   libdiscid0
3255   libelf1
3256   libepc-1.0-2
3257   libepc-common
3258   libepc-ui-1.0-2
3259   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
3260   libfreerdp0
3261   libgconf2.0-cil
3262   libgdata-common
3263   libgdata7
3264   libgdu-gtk0
3265   libgee2
3266   libgeoclue0
3267   libgexiv2-0
3268   libgif4
3269   libglade2.0-cil
3270   libglib2.0-cil
3271   libgmime2.4-cil
3272   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
3273   libgnome2.24-cil
3274   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
3275   libgpod-common
3276   libgpod4
3277   libgtk2.0-cil
3278   libgtkglext1
3279   libgtksourceview2.0-common
3280   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
3281   libmono-addins0.2-cil
3282   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
3283   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
3284   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
3285   libmono-posix2.0-cil
3286   libmono-security2.0-cil
3287   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
3288   libmono-system2.0-cil
3289   libmtp8
3290   libmusicbrainz3-6
3291   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
3292   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
3293   libopal3.6.8
3294   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
3295   libpt2.6.7
3296   libpython2.6
3297   librpm1
3298   librpmio1
3299   libsdl1.2debian
3300   libsrtp0
3301   libssh-4
3302   libtelepathy-farsight0
3303   libtelepathy-glib0
3304   libtidy-0.99-0
3305   media-player-info
3306   mesa-utils
3307   mono-2.0-gac
3308   mono-gac
3309   mono-runtime
3310   nautilus-sendto
3311   nautilus-sendto-empathy
3312   p7zip-full
3313   pkg-config
3314   python-aptdaemon
3315   python-aptdaemon-gtk
3316   python-axiom
3317   python-beautifulsoup
3318   python-bugbuddy
3319   python-clientform
3320   python-coherence
3321   python-configobj
3322   python-crypto
3323   python-cupshelpers
3324   python-elementtree
3325   python-epsilon
3326   python-evolution
3327   python-feedparser
3328   python-gdata
3329   python-gdbm
3330   python-gst0.10
3331   python-gtkglext1
3332   python-gtksourceview2
3333   python-httplib2
3334   python-louie
3335   python-mako
3336   python-markupsafe
3337   python-mechanize
3338   python-nevow
3339   python-notify
3340   python-opengl
3341   python-openssl
3342   python-pam
3343   python-pkg-resources
3344   python-pyasn1
3345   python-pysqlite2
3346   python-rdflib
3347   python-serial
3348   python-tagpy
3349   python-twisted-bin
3350   python-twisted-conch
3351   python-twisted-core
3352   python-twisted-web
3353   python-utidylib
3354   python-webkit
3355   python-xdg
3356   python-zope.interface
3357   remmina
3358   remmina-plugin-data
3359   remmina-plugin-rdp
3360   remmina-plugin-vnc
3361   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
3362   rhythmbox-plugins
3363   rpm-common
3364   rpm2cpio
3365   seahorse-plugins
3366   shotwell
3367   software-center
3368   system-config-printer-udev
3369   telepathy-gabble
3370   telepathy-mission-control-5
3371   telepathy-salut
3372   tomboy
3373   totem
3374   totem-coherence
3375   totem-mozilla
3376   totem-plugins
3377   transmission-common
3378   xdg-user-dirs
3379   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
3380   xserver-xephyr
3381 </p></blockquote>
3382
3383 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3384
3385 <blockquote><p>
3386   cheese
3387   ekiga
3388   eog
3389   epiphany-extensions
3390   evolution-exchange
3391   fast-user-switch-applet
3392   file-roller
3393   gcalctool
3394   gconf-editor
3395   gdm
3396   gedit
3397   gedit-common
3398   gnome-games
3399   gnome-games-data
3400   gnome-nettool
3401   gnome-system-tools
3402   gnome-themes
3403   gnuchess
3404   gucharmap
3405   guile-1.8-libs
3406   libavahi-ui0
3407   libdmx1
3408   libgalago3
3409   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
3410   libgtksourceview2.0-0
3411   liblircclient0
3412   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
3413   libspeexdsp1
3414   libsvga1
3415   rhythmbox
3416   seahorse
3417   sound-juicer
3418   system-config-printer
3419   totem-common
3420   transmission-gtk
3421   vinagre
3422   vino
3423 </p></blockquote>
3424
3425 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3426
3427 <blockquote><p>
3428   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3429 </p></blockquote>
3430
3431 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3432
3433 <blockquote><p>
3434 [nothing]
3435 </p></blockquote>
3436
3437 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
3438
3439 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3440
3441 <blockquote><p>
3442   ksmserver
3443 </p></blockquote>
3444
3445 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3446
3447 <blockquote><p>
3448   kwin
3449   network-manager-kde
3450 </p></blockquote>
3451
3452 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3453
3454 <blockquote><p>
3455   arts
3456   dolphin
3457   freespacenotifier
3458   google-gadgets-gst
3459   google-gadgets-xul
3460   kappfinder
3461   kcalc
3462   kcharselect
3463   kde-core
3464   kde-plasma-desktop
3465   kde-standard
3466   kde-window-manager
3467   kdeartwork
3468   kdeartwork-emoticons
3469   kdeartwork-style
3470   kdeartwork-theme-icon
3471   kdebase
3472   kdebase-apps
3473   kdebase-workspace
3474   kdebase-workspace-bin
3475   kdebase-workspace-data
3476   kdeeject
3477   kdelibs
3478   kdeplasma-addons
3479   kdeutils
3480   kdewallpapers
3481   kdf
3482   kfloppy
3483   kgpg
3484   khelpcenter4
3485   kinfocenter
3486   konq-plugins-l10n
3487   konqueror-nsplugins
3488   kscreensaver
3489   kscreensaver-xsavers
3490   ktimer
3491   kwrite
3492   libgle3
3493   libkde4-ruby1.8
3494   libkonq5
3495   libkonq5-templates
3496   libnetpbm10
3497   libplasma-ruby
3498   libplasma-ruby1.8
3499   libqt4-ruby1.8
3500   marble-data
3501   marble-plugins
3502   netpbm
3503   nuvola-icon-theme
3504   plasma-dataengines-workspace
3505   plasma-desktop
3506   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
3507   plasma-runners-addons
3508   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
3509   plasma-scriptengine-python
3510   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
3511   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
3512   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
3513   plasma-scriptengines
3514   plasma-wallpapers-addons
3515   plasma-widget-folderview
3516   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
3517   ruby
3518   sweeper
3519   update-notifier-kde
3520   xscreensaver-data-extra
3521   xscreensaver-gl
3522   xscreensaver-gl-extra
3523   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
3524 </p></blockquote>
3525
3526 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3527
3528 <blockquote><p>
3529   ark
3530   google-gadgets-common
3531   google-gadgets-qt
3532   htdig
3533   kate
3534   kdebase-bin
3535   kdebase-data
3536   kdepasswd
3537   kfind
3538   klipper
3539   konq-plugins
3540   konqueror
3541   ksysguard
3542   ksysguardd
3543   libarchive1
3544   libcln6
3545   libeet1
3546   libeina-svn-06
3547   libggadget-1.0-0b
3548   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
3549   libgps19
3550   libkdecorations4
3551   libkephal4
3552   libkonq4
3553   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
3554   libkscreensaver5
3555   libksgrd4
3556   libksignalplotter4
3557   libkunitconversion4
3558   libkwineffects1a
3559   libmarblewidget4
3560   libntrack-qt4-1
3561   libntrack0
3562   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
3563   libplasmaclock4a
3564   libplasmagenericshell4
3565   libprocesscore4a
3566   libprocessui4a
3567   libqalculate5
3568   libqedje0a
3569   libqtruby4shared2
3570   libqzion0a
3571   libruby1.8
3572   libscim8c2a
3573   libsmokekdecore4-3
3574   libsmokekdeui4-3
3575   libsmokekfile3
3576   libsmokekhtml3
3577   libsmokekio3
3578   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
3579   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
3580   libsmokekparts3
3581   libsmokektexteditor3
3582   libsmokekutils3
3583   libsmokenepomuk3
3584   libsmokephonon3
3585   libsmokeplasma3
3586   libsmokeqtcore4-3
3587   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
3588   libsmokeqtgui4-3
3589   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
3590   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
3591   libsmokeqtscript4-3
3592   libsmokeqtsql4-3
3593   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
3594   libsmokeqttest4-3
3595   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
3596   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
3597   libsmokeqtxml4-3
3598   libsmokesolid3
3599   libsmokesoprano3
3600   libtaskmanager4a
3601   libtidy-0.99-0
3602   libweather-ion4a
3603   libxklavier16
3604   libxxf86misc1
3605   okteta
3606   oxygencursors
3607   plasma-dataengines-addons
3608   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
3609   plasma-widget-lancelot
3610   plasma-widgets-addons
3611   plasma-widgets-workspace
3612   polkit-kde-1
3613   ruby1.8
3614   systemsettings
3615   update-notifier-common
3616 </p></blockquote>
3617
3618 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
3619 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
3620 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
3621 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
3622
3623       </div>
3624       <div class="tags">
3625
3626
3627         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>.
3628
3629
3630       </div>
3631     </div>
3632     <div class="padding"></div>
3633
3634     <div class="entry">
3635       <div class="title">
3636         <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>
3637       </div>
3638       <div class="date">
3639         22nd November 2010
3640       </div>
3641       <div class="body">
3642         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
3643 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
3644 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
3645 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
3646 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
3647 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
3648 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
3649 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
3650 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
3651
3652 <p>I found
3653 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
3654 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
3655 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
3656 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
3657 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
3658 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
3659
3660 <pre>
3661 #!/bin/sh
3662
3663 # Based on
3664 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
3665
3666 set -e
3667 set -x
3668
3669 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
3670     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
3671     exit 1
3672 else
3673     host="$1"
3674 fi
3675
3676 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
3677     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
3678     exit 1
3679 fi
3680
3681 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
3682 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
3683 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
3684 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
3685
3686 img=$host.img
3687 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
3688 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
3689
3690 parted $img mklabel msdos
3691 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
3692 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
3693 parted $img set 1 boot on
3694
3695 modprobe dm-mod
3696 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
3697 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
3698
3699 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
3700 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
3701 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
3702
3703 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
3704 losetup -d /dev/loop0
3705 </pre>
3706
3707 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
3708 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
3709
3710 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
3711 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
3712 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
3713 seem to work just fine.</p>
3714
3715       </div>
3716       <div class="tags">
3717
3718
3719         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>.
3720
3721
3722       </div>
3723     </div>
3724     <div class="padding"></div>
3725
3726     <div class="entry">
3727       <div class="title">
3728         <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>
3729       </div>
3730       <div class="date">
3731         20th November 2010
3732       </div>
3733       <div class="body">
3734         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
3735 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
3736 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
3737 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
3738
3739 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
3740 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
3741 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
3742
3743 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
3744
3745 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3746
3747 <blockquote><p>
3748   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
3749   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
3750   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
3751   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
3752   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
3753   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
3754   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
3755   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
3756   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
3757   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
3758   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
3759   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
3760   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
3761   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
3762   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
3763   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
3764   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
3765   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
3766   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
3767   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
3768   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
3769   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
3770   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
3771   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
3772   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
3773   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
3774   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
3775   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
3776   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
3777   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
3778   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
3779   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
3780   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
3781   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
3782   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
3783   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
3784   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
3785   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
3786   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
3787   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
3788   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
3789   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
3790   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
3791   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
3792   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
3793   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
3794   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
3795   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
3796   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
3797   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
3798   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
3799   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
3800   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
3801   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
3802   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
3803   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
3804   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
3805   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
3806   zip
3807 </p></blockquote>
3808
3809 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
3810
3811 <blockquote><p>
3812   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
3813   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
3814   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
3815   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
3816   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
3817   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
3818   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
3819   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
3820   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
3821   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
3822   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
3823   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
3824   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
3825   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
3826   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
3827   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
3828   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
3829   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
3830   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
3831   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
3832   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
3833   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
3834   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
3835   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
3836   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
3837   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
3838   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
3839   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
3840   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
3841 </p></blockquote>
3842
3843 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3844
3845 <blockquote><p>
3846   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
3847 </p></blockquote>
3848
3849 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3850
3851 <blockquote><p>
3852 [nothing]
3853 </p></blockquote>
3854
3855 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
3856
3857 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
3858
3859 <blockquote><p>
3860   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
3861   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
3862   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
3863   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
3864   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
3865   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
3866   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
3867   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
3868   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
3869   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
3870   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
3871   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
3872   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
3873   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
3874   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
3875   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
3876   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
3877   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
3878   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
3879   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
3880   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
3881   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
3882   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
3883   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
3884   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
3885   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
3886   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
3887   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
3888   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
3889   ttf-sazanami-gothic
3890 </p></blockquote>
3891
3892 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
3893
3894 <blockquote><p>
3895   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
3896   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
3897   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
3898   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
3899   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
3900   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
3901   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
3902   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
3903   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
3904   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
3905   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
3906   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
3907   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
3908   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
3909   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
3910   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
3911   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
3912   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
3913   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
3914   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
3915   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
3916   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
3917   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
3918   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
3919   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
3920   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
3921   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
3922   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
3923   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
3924   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
3925   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
3926   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
3927   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
3928 </p></blockquote>
3929
3930 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
3931
3932 <blockquote><p>
3933   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
3934   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
3935   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
3936   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
3937   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
3938   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
3939   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
3940 </p></blockquote>
3941
3942 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
3943
3944 <blockquote><p>
3945   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
3946 </p></blockquote>
3947
3948       </div>
3949       <div class="tags">
3950
3951
3952         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>.
3953
3954
3955       </div>
3956     </div>
3957     <div class="padding"></div>
3958
3959     <div class="entry">
3960       <div class="title">
3961         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
3962       </div>
3963       <div class="date">
3964         20th November 2010
3965       </div>
3966       <div class="body">
3967         <p>Answering
3968 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
3969 call from the Gnash project</a> for
3970 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
3971 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
3972 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
3973 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
3974 releases out more often.</p>
3975
3976 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
3977 I have considered setting up a <a
3978 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
3979 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
3980 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
3981 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
3982 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
3983 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
3984 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
3985 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
3986 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
3987 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
3988 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
3989 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
3990
3991       </div>
3992       <div class="tags">
3993
3994
3995         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>.
3996
3997
3998       </div>
3999     </div>
4000     <div class="padding"></div>
4001
4002     <div class="entry">
4003       <div class="title">
4004         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
4005       </div>
4006       <div class="date">
4007          9th November 2010
4008       </div>
4009       <div class="body">
4010         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
4011
4012 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
4013 3D linked in from
4014 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
4015 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
4016
4017       </div>
4018       <div class="tags">
4019
4020
4021         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>.
4022
4023
4024       </div>
4025     </div>
4026     <div class="padding"></div>
4027
4028     <div class="entry">
4029       <div class="title">
4030         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
4031       </div>
4032       <div class="date">
4033         24th October 2010
4034       </div>
4035       <div class="body">
4036         <p>Some updates.</p>
4037
4038 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
4039 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
4040 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
4041 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
4042 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
4043 :)</p>
4044
4045 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
4046 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
4047 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
4048 It is called
4049 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
4050 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
4051 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
4052 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
4053 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
4054 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
4055
4056 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
4057 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
4058 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
4059 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
4060 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
4061 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
4062 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
4063 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
4064 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
4065 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
4066
4067       </div>
4068       <div class="tags">
4069
4070
4071         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>.
4072
4073
4074       </div>
4075     </div>
4076     <div class="padding"></div>
4077
4078     <div class="entry">
4079       <div class="title">
4080         <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>
4081       </div>
4082       <div class="date">
4083          4th September 2010
4084       </div>
4085       <div class="body">
4086         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
4087 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
4088 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
4089 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
4090 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
4091 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
4092 installed.</p>
4093
4094 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
4095 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
4096 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
4097 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
4098 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
4099 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
4100 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
4101 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
4102 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
4103
4104 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
4105 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
4106 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
4107 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
4108 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
4109 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
4110 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
4111 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
4112 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
4113 pages they want to visit.</p>
4114
4115 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
4116 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
4117 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
4118 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
4119 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
4120 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
4121 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
4122 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
4123 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
4124 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
4125 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
4126
4127       </div>
4128       <div class="tags">
4129
4130
4131         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>.
4132
4133
4134       </div>
4135     </div>
4136     <div class="padding"></div>
4137
4138     <div class="entry">
4139       <div class="title">
4140         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
4141       </div>
4142       <div class="date">
4143         27th July 2010
4144       </div>
4145       <div class="body">
4146         <p>I discovered this while doing
4147 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
4148 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
4149 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
4150 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
4151 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
4152
4153 <p>An example is from todays
4154 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
4155 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
4156 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
4157 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
4158 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
4159 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
4160 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
4161
4162 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
4163
4164 <blockquote><pre>
4165 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
4166  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
4167   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
4168 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
4169  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
4170 </pre></blockquote>
4171
4172 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
4173 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
4174 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
4175 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
4176 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
4177 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
4178 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
4179 of dependency loops.</p>
4180
4181 <p>Thanks to
4182 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
4183 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
4184 dependencies
4185 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
4186 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
4187
4188 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
4189 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
4190 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
4191 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
4192 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
4193 it.</p>
4194
4195       </div>
4196       <div class="tags">
4197
4198
4199         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>.
4200
4201
4202       </div>
4203     </div>
4204     <div class="padding"></div>
4205
4206     <div class="entry">
4207       <div class="title">
4208         <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>
4209       </div>
4210       <div class="date">
4211         17th July 2010
4212       </div>
4213       <div class="body">
4214         <p>This is a
4215 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
4216 on my
4217 <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
4218 work</a> on
4219 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
4220 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
4221
4222 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
4223 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
4224 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
4225 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
4226
4227 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
4228 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
4229 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
4230
4231 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
4232
4233 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
4234 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
4235 the web.
4236
4237 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
4238 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
4239 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
4240 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
4241 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
4242 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
4243
4244 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
4245 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
4246 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
4247 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
4248 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
4249 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
4250 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
4251 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
4252 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
4253 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
4254 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
4255 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
4256 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
4257 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
4258 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
4259 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
4260
4261 <blockquote><pre>
4262 ldapsearch -h ldap \
4263   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
4264   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
4265   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
4266   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
4267   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
4268   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
4269
4270 ldapsearch -h ldap \
4271   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
4272   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
4273   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
4274   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
4275   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
4276 </pre></blockquote>
4277
4278 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
4279 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
4280 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
4281 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4282 also exist.</p>
4283
4284 <blockquote><pre>
4285 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4286 objectclass: top
4287 objectclass: dnsdomain
4288 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4289 dc: tjener
4290 arecord: 10.0.2.2
4291 associateddomain: tjener.intern
4292
4293 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4294 objectclass: top
4295 objectclass: dnsdomain2
4296 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4297 dc: 2
4298 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
4299 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
4300 </pre></blockquote>
4301
4302 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
4303 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
4304 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
4305 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
4306 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
4307 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
4308 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
4309 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
4310 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
4311 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
4312 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
4313 instead.</p>
4314
4315 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
4316 like this:</p>
4317
4318 <blockquote><pre>
4319 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
4320   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
4321   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
4322   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
4323   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
4324   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
4325
4326 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
4327   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
4328 </pre></blockquote>
4329
4330 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
4331 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
4332 reverse lookups.</p>
4333
4334 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
4335 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
4336 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
4337 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
4338
4339 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
4340 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
4341 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
4342
4343 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
4344 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
4345 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
4346 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
4347 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
4348
4349 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
4350 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
4351 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
4352 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
4353 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
4354
4355 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
4356 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
4357 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
4358 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
4359 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
4360 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
4361
4362 <blockquote><pre>
4363 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
4364     SUP top
4365     AUXILIARY
4366     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
4367           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
4368           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
4369           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
4370           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
4371     ))
4372 </pre></blockquote>
4373
4374 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
4375 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
4376 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
4377 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
4378 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
4379 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
4380
4381 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
4382
4383 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
4384 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
4385 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
4386 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
4387 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
4388
4389 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
4390 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
4391 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
4392 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
4393
4394 <blockquote><pre>
4395 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
4396 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
4397 </pre></blockquote>
4398
4399 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
4400 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
4401 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
4402 search result is this entry:</p>
4403
4404 <blockquote><pre>
4405 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4406 cn: dhcp
4407 objectClass: top
4408 objectClass: dhcpServer
4409 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4410 </pre></blockquote>
4411
4412 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
4413 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
4414 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
4415 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
4416 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
4417 The search result is this entry:</p>
4418
4419 <blockquote><pre>
4420 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4421 cn: DHCP Config
4422 objectClass: top
4423 objectClass: dhcpService
4424 objectClass: dhcpOptions
4425 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4426 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
4427 dhcpStatements: authoritative
4428 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
4429 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
4430 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
4431 </pre></blockquote>
4432
4433 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
4434 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
4435 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
4436 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
4437 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
4438 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
4439 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
4440 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
4441 related computer objects.</p>
4442
4443 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
4444 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
4445 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
4446 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
4447 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
4448 like:</p>
4449
4450 <blockquote><pre>
4451 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4452 cn: hostname
4453 objectClass: top
4454 objectClass: dhcpHost
4455 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
4456 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
4457 </pre></blockquote>
4458
4459 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
4460 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
4461 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
4462 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
4463 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
4464 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
4465 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
4466 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
4467 structural object class.
4468
4469 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
4470
4471 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
4472 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
4473 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
4474 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
4475 in the configuration.</p>
4476
4477 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
4478 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
4479 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
4480 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
4481 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
4482 structure.</p>
4483
4484 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
4485 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
4486
4487 <blockquote><pre>
4488 ou=services
4489   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
4490     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
4491     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
4492       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
4493         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
4494     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
4495       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
4496         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
4497     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
4498       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
4499 </pre></blockquote>
4500
4501 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
4502 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
4503 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
4504 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
4505
4506 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
4507 like this:</p>
4508
4509 <blockquote><pre>
4510 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4511 dc: hostname
4512 objectClass: top
4513 objectClass: dhcpHost
4514 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4515 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
4516 associateddomain: hostname.intern
4517 arecord: 10.11.12.13
4518 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
4519 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
4520 </pre></blockquote>
4521
4522 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
4523 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
4524 auxiliary object class.</p>
4525
4526       </div>
4527       <div class="tags">
4528
4529
4530         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>.
4531
4532
4533       </div>
4534     </div>
4535     <div class="padding"></div>
4536
4537     <div class="entry">
4538       <div class="title">
4539         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
4540       </div>
4541       <div class="date">
4542         14th July 2010
4543       </div>
4544       <div class="body">
4545         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
4546 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
4547 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
4548 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
4549 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
4550
4551 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
4552 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
4553
4554 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
4555 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
4556 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
4557 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
4558 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
4559 to a slave DNS server.</p>
4560
4561 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
4562 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
4563 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
4564 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
4565 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
4566 seem to work.</p>
4567
4568 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
4569 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
4570 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
4571 this:</p>
4572
4573 <blockquote><pre>
4574   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4575   cn: hostname
4576   objectClass: dhcphost
4577   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
4578   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
4579   associateddomain: hostname.intern
4580   arecord: 10.11.12.13
4581   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
4582   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
4583   ldapconfigsound: Y
4584 </pre></blockquote>
4585
4586 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
4587 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
4588 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
4589 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
4590
4591 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
4592 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
4593 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
4594 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
4595 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
4596 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
4597 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
4598 might be a good place to put it.</p>
4599
4600 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4601 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4602
4603       </div>
4604       <div class="tags">
4605
4606
4607         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>.
4608
4609
4610       </div>
4611     </div>
4612     <div class="padding"></div>
4613
4614     <div class="entry">
4615       <div class="title">
4616         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
4617       </div>
4618       <div class="date">
4619         11th July 2010
4620       </div>
4621       <div class="body">
4622         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
4623 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
4624 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
4625 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
4626
4627 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
4628 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
4629 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
4630 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
4631 LTSP clients.</p>
4632
4633 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
4634 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
4635 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
4636
4637 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
4638 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
4639 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
4640
4641 <blockquote><pre>
4642 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
4643 #
4644 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
4645 #
4646 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
4647 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
4648 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
4649 #
4650 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
4651 # existence of attribute names.
4652 #
4653 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
4654 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
4655 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
4656 #
4657 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
4658 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
4659 #
4660 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
4661 #     SUP top
4662 #     AUXILIARY
4663 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
4664
4665 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
4666 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
4667     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
4668     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
4669         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
4670         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
4671             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
4672             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
4673             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
4674             # bass value on to clients
4675             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
4676         done
4677     done
4678 fi
4679 </pre></blockquote>
4680
4681 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
4682 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
4683 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
4684 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
4685 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
4686
4687 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4688 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4689
4690 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
4691 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
4692 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
4693 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
4694 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
4695 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
4696
4697       </div>
4698       <div class="tags">
4699
4700
4701         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>.
4702
4703
4704       </div>
4705     </div>
4706     <div class="padding"></div>
4707
4708     <div class="entry">
4709       <div class="title">
4710         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
4711       </div>
4712       <div class="date">
4713          9th July 2010
4714       </div>
4715       <div class="body">
4716         <p>Since
4717 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
4718 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
4719 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
4720 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
4721 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
4722 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
4723 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
4724 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
4725 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
4726 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
4727 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
4728 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
4729 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
4730
4731       </div>
4732       <div class="tags">
4733
4734
4735         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>.
4736
4737
4738       </div>
4739     </div>
4740     <div class="padding"></div>
4741
4742     <div class="entry">
4743       <div class="title">
4744         <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>
4745       </div>
4746       <div class="date">
4747          3rd July 2010
4748       </div>
4749       <div class="body">
4750         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
4751 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
4752 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
4753 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
4754 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
4755 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
4756 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
4757 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
4758
4759 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
4760 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
4761 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
4762 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
4763 publish the difference.</p>
4764
4765 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
4766
4767 <blockquote><p>
4768   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
4769   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
4770   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
4771   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
4772   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
4773   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
4774   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
4775   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
4776 </p></blockquote>
4777
4778 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
4779
4780 <blockquote><p>
4781   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
4782   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
4783   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
4784   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
4785   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
4786   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
4787   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
4788   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
4789   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
4790   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
4791   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
4792   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
4793   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
4794   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
4795   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
4796   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
4797   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
4798   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
4799   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
4800   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
4801 </p></blockquote>
4802
4803 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
4804
4805 <blockquote><p>
4806   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
4807   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
4808   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
4809   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
4810   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
4811   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
4812   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
4813   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
4814   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
4815   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
4816   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
4817   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
4818   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
4819   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
4820   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
4821   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
4822   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
4823   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
4824   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
4825   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
4826   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
4827 </p></blockquote>
4828
4829 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
4830
4831 <blockquote><p>
4832   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
4833   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
4834   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
4835 </p></blockquote>
4836
4837 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
4838 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
4839 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
4840 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
4841 the difference somewhat.
4842
4843       </div>
4844       <div class="tags">
4845
4846
4847         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>.
4848
4849
4850       </div>
4851     </div>
4852     <div class="padding"></div>
4853
4854     <div class="entry">
4855       <div class="title">
4856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
4857       </div>
4858       <div class="date">
4859         28th June 2010
4860       </div>
4861       <div class="body">
4862         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
4863 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
4864 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
4865 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
4866 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
4867 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
4868 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
4869 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
4870 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
4871 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
4872
4873 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
4874 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
4875 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
4876 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
4877 released.</p>
4878
4879 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
4880 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
4881 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
4882 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
4883
4884 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
4885 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4886
4887 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
4888 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
4889 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
4890 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
4891 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
4892
4893       </div>
4894       <div class="tags">
4895
4896
4897         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>.
4898
4899
4900       </div>
4901     </div>
4902     <div class="padding"></div>
4903
4904     <div class="entry">
4905       <div class="title">
4906         <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>
4907       </div>
4908       <div class="date">
4909         24th June 2010
4910       </div>
4911       <div class="body">
4912         <p>A while back, I
4913 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
4914 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
4915 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
4916 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
4917
4918 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
4919 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
4920 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
4921 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
4922
4923 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
4924 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
4925 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
4926 Debian Edu.</p>
4927
4928 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
4929 the
4930 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
4931 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
4932 available today from IETF.</p>
4933
4934 <pre>
4935 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
4936 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
4937 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
4938  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
4939         NAME 'dhcpHost'
4940         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
4941 -       SUP top
4942 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
4943         MUST cn
4944         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
4945         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
4946 </pre>
4947
4948 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
4949 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
4950 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
4951
4952 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
4953 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
4954
4955       </div>
4956       <div class="tags">
4957
4958
4959         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>.
4960
4961
4962       </div>
4963     </div>
4964     <div class="padding"></div>
4965
4966     <div class="entry">
4967       <div class="title">
4968         <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>
4969       </div>
4970       <div class="date">
4971         16th June 2010
4972       </div>
4973       <div class="body">
4974         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
4975 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
4976 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
4977 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
4978 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
4979 this:
4980
4981 <blockquote><pre>
4982 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
4983 tasksel --new-install
4984 </pre></blockquote>
4985
4986 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
4987 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
4988 any output what so ever.
4989
4990 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
4991 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
4992 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
4993 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
4994 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
4995 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
4996 code like this:
4997
4998 <blockquote><pre>
4999 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
5000 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
5001 $cmd
5002 </pre></blockquote>
5003
5004 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
5005 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
5006 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
5007 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
5008 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
5009 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
5010 installation.</p>
5011
5012 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
5013 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
5014 like this.</p>
5015
5016       </div>
5017       <div class="tags">
5018
5019
5020         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>.
5021
5022
5023       </div>
5024     </div>
5025     <div class="padding"></div>
5026
5027     <div class="entry">
5028       <div class="title">
5029         <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>
5030       </div>
5031       <div class="date">
5032         13th June 2010
5033       </div>
5034       <div class="body">
5035         <p>My
5036 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
5037 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
5038 finally made the upgrade logs available from
5039 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
5040 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
5041 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
5042 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
5043
5044 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
5045 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
5046 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
5047 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
5048 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
5049 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
5050 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
5051 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
5052
5053 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
5054 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
5055 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
5056 too surprising.</p>
5057
5058 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
5059 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
5060 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
5061 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
5062 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
5063 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
5064 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
5065 continue.</p>
5066
5067 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
5068 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
5069   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
5070   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
5071   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
5072   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
5073   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
5074   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
5075   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
5076   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
5077   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
5078   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
5079   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
5080   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
5081   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
5082   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5083   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
5084   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
5085   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
5086   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
5087   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
5088   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
5089   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
5090   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
5091   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
5092   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
5093   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
5094   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
5095   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
5096   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
5097
5098 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
5099
5100 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
5101   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
5102   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
5103   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
5104   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
5105   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
5106   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
5107   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
5108   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
5109   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
5110   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
5111   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
5112   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
5113   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
5114   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
5115   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
5116   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
5117   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
5118   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
5119   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
5120   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
5121   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
5122   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
5123   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
5124   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
5125   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
5126   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
5127   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
5128   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
5129   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5130   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
5131   zip</p>
5132
5133 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
5134
5135 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
5136   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
5137   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
5138   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
5139   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
5140   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
5141   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
5142   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
5143   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
5144   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
5145   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
5146   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
5147   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
5148   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
5149   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5150   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
5151   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
5152   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
5153   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
5154   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
5155   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
5156   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
5157   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
5158   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
5159   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
5160   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
5161   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
5162   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
5163
5164 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
5165 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
5166   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
5167   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
5168   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
5169   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
5170   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
5171   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
5172   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
5173   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
5174   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
5175   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
5176   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
5177   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
5178   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
5179   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
5180   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
5181   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
5182   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
5183   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
5184   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
5185   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
5186   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
5187   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
5188   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
5189   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
5190   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
5191   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
5192   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
5193   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
5194   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
5195   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
5196   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
5197   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
5198   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
5199   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
5200   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
5201   xulrunner-1.9</p>
5202
5203
5204       </div>
5205       <div class="tags">
5206
5207
5208         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>.
5209
5210
5211       </div>
5212     </div>
5213     <div class="padding"></div>
5214
5215     <div class="entry">
5216       <div class="title">
5217         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
5218       </div>
5219       <div class="date">
5220         11th June 2010
5221       </div>
5222       <div class="body">
5223         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
5224 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
5225 have been discovered and reported in the process
5226 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
5227 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
5228 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
5229 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
5230 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
5231
5232 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
5233 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
5234 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
5235 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
5236 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
5237 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
5238
5239 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
5240 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
5241 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
5242 is created.  The bug report
5243 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
5244 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
5245 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
5246 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
5247 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
5248 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
5249 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
5250 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
5251 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
5252 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
5253 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
5254 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
5255 Debian Squeeze.</p>
5256
5257 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
5258 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
5259 trick:</p>
5260
5261 <blockquote><pre>
5262 #!/bin/sh
5263 set -ex
5264
5265 if [ "$1" ] ; then
5266     desktop=$1
5267 else
5268     desktop=gnome
5269 fi
5270
5271 from=lenny
5272 to=squeeze
5273
5274 exec &lt; /dev/null
5275 unset LANG
5276 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
5277 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
5278 fuser -mv .
5279 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
5280 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
5281 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
5282 #!/bin/sh
5283 exit 101
5284 EOF
5285 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
5286 exit_cleanup() {
5287     umount $tmpdir/proc
5288 }
5289 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
5290 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
5291 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
5292
5293 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
5294
5295 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
5296 # to return the correct answers.
5297 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
5298     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
5299
5300 # Include the desktop and laptop task
5301 for test in desktop laptop ; do
5302     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
5303 #!/bin/sh
5304 exit 2
5305 EOF
5306     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
5307 done
5308
5309 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
5310 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
5311 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
5312 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
5313
5314 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
5315 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
5316 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
5317 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
5318 fuser -mv
5319 </pre></blockquote>
5320
5321 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
5322 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
5323 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
5324 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
5325 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
5326 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
5327
5328 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
5329 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
5330 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
5331 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
5332 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
5333 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
5334 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
5335
5336 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
5337 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
5338 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
5339 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
5340 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
5341 packages.</p>
5342
5343       </div>
5344       <div class="tags">
5345
5346
5347         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>.
5348
5349
5350       </div>
5351     </div>
5352     <div class="padding"></div>
5353
5354     <div class="entry">
5355       <div class="title">
5356         <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>
5357       </div>
5358       <div class="date">
5359          6th June 2010
5360       </div>
5361       <div class="body">
5362         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
5363 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
5364 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
5365 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
5366 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
5367 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
5368 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
5369
5370 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
5371 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
5372 COLUMNS):</p>
5373
5374 <blockquote><pre>
5375 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
5376 previous=N
5377 PREVLEVEL=
5378 RUNLEVEL=
5379 runlevel=S
5380 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
5381 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
5382 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
5383 </pre></blockquote>
5384
5385 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
5386 script.</p>
5387
5388 <blockquote><pre>
5389 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
5390 previous=N
5391 PREVLEVEL=N
5392 RUNLEVEL=S
5393 runlevel=S
5394 </pre></blockquote>
5395
5396 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
5397 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
5398 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
5399
5400 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
5401 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
5402 choice.</p>
5403
5404       </div>
5405       <div class="tags">
5406
5407
5408         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>.
5409
5410
5411       </div>
5412     </div>
5413     <div class="padding"></div>
5414
5415     <div class="entry">
5416       <div class="title">
5417         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
5418       </div>
5419       <div class="date">
5420          6th June 2010
5421       </div>
5422       <div class="body">
5423         <p>Via the
5424 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
5425 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
5426 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
5427 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
5428 following the standards wars of today.</p>
5429
5430       </div>
5431       <div class="tags">
5432
5433
5434         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>.
5435
5436
5437       </div>
5438     </div>
5439     <div class="padding"></div>
5440
5441     <div class="entry">
5442       <div class="title">
5443         <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>
5444       </div>
5445       <div class="date">
5446          3rd June 2010
5447       </div>
5448       <div class="body">
5449         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
5450 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
5451 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
5452 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
5453 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
5454
5455 <blockquote><pre>
5456 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
5457   vendor                    count
5458   Dell Computer Corporation     1
5459     PowerEdge 1750              1
5460   IBM                           1
5461     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
5462   Intel                         2
5463   [no-dmi-info]                 3
5464 maintainer:~#
5465 </pre></blockquote>
5466
5467 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
5468 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
5469 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
5470 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
5471 option to list the individual machines.</p>
5472
5473 <p>A larger list is
5474 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
5475 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
5476 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
5477 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
5478 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
5479 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
5480 collector.</p>
5481
5482       </div>
5483       <div class="tags">
5484
5485
5486         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>.
5487
5488
5489       </div>
5490     </div>
5491     <div class="padding"></div>
5492
5493     <div class="entry">
5494       <div class="title">
5495         <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>
5496       </div>
5497       <div class="date">
5498          1st June 2010
5499       </div>
5500       <div class="body">
5501         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
5502 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
5503 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
5504 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
5505 wait.</p>
5506
5507 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
5508 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
5509 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
5510 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
5511 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
5512 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
5513
5514 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
5515 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
5516 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
5517 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
5518 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
5519 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
5520 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
5521 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
5522
5523 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
5524
5525       </div>
5526       <div class="tags">
5527
5528
5529         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>.
5530
5531
5532       </div>
5533     </div>
5534     <div class="padding"></div>
5535
5536     <div class="entry">
5537       <div class="title">
5538         <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>
5539       </div>
5540       <div class="date">
5541         27th May 2010
5542       </div>
5543       <div class="body">
5544         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
5545 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
5546 issues are known and should be solved:
5547
5548 <p><ul>
5549
5550 <li>The wicd package seen to
5551 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
5552 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
5553 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
5554 seem to be on the case.</li>
5555
5556 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
5557 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
5558 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
5559 maintainer is on the case.</li>
5560
5561 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
5562 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
5563 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
5564 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
5565 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
5566 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
5567 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
5568 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
5569
5570 </ul></p>
5571
5572 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
5573 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
5574 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
5575 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
5576
5577 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
5578 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
5579 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
5580 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
5581
5582 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
5583
5584       </div>
5585       <div class="tags">
5586
5587
5588         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>.
5589
5590
5591       </div>
5592     </div>
5593     <div class="padding"></div>
5594
5595     <div class="entry">
5596       <div class="title">
5597         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
5598       </div>
5599       <div class="date">
5600         22nd May 2010
5601       </div>
5602       <div class="body">
5603         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
5604 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
5605 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
5606 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
5607
5608 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
5609 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
5610 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
5611 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
5612 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
5613 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
5614 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
5615 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
5616 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
5617 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
5618 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
5619 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
5620 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
5621 going to work.</p>
5622
5623 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
5624 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
5625 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
5626 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
5627 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
5628 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
5629 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
5630 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
5631 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
5632 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
5633 Edu.</p>
5634
5635 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
5636 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
5637 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
5638 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
5639 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
5640 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
5641
5642 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
5643 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
5644
5645       </div>
5646       <div class="tags">
5647
5648
5649         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>.
5650
5651
5652       </div>
5653     </div>
5654     <div class="padding"></div>
5655
5656     <div class="entry">
5657       <div class="title">
5658         <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>
5659       </div>
5660       <div class="date">
5661         14th May 2010
5662       </div>
5663       <div class="body">
5664         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
5665 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
5666 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
5667 expected, if I am to believe the
5668 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
5669 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
5670 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
5671 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
5672 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
5673 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
5674 version.</p>
5675
5676 More information about
5677 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5678 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
5679 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
5680 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
5681
5682 <blockquote><pre>
5683 CONCURRENCY=none
5684 </pre></blockquote>
5685
5686 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
5687 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
5688 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
5689 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
5690
5691       </div>
5692       <div class="tags">
5693
5694
5695         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>.
5696
5697
5698       </div>
5699     </div>
5700     <div class="padding"></div>
5701
5702     <div class="entry">
5703       <div class="title">
5704         <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>
5705       </div>
5706       <div class="date">
5707         14th May 2010
5708       </div>
5709       <div class="body">
5710         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
5711 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
5712 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
5713 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
5714 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
5715 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
5716 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
5717 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
5718
5719 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
5720 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
5721 this on the collector host:</p>
5722
5723 <blockquote><pre>
5724 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
5725 </pre></blockquote>
5726
5727 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
5728 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
5729
5730 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
5731 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
5732 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
5733 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
5734 written yet.</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/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>.
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/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
5750       </div>
5751       <div class="date">
5752         13th May 2010
5753       </div>
5754       <div class="body">
5755         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
5756 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
5757 has been
5758 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
5759
5760 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
5761 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
5762 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
5763 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
5764 based boot system.  Tollef is
5765 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
5766 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
5767 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
5768 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
5769 at the moment do not.</p>
5770
5771 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
5772 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
5773 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
5774 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
5775 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
5776 way forward.</p>
5777
5778 <p>In the mean time, based on the
5779 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
5780 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
5781 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
5782 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
5783 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
5784 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
5785 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
5786 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
5787
5788       </div>
5789       <div class="tags">
5790
5791
5792         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>.
5793
5794
5795       </div>
5796     </div>
5797     <div class="padding"></div>
5798
5799     <div class="entry">
5800       <div class="title">
5801         <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>
5802       </div>
5803       <div class="date">
5804          6th May 2010
5805       </div>
5806       <div class="body">
5807         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
5808 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
5809 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
5810 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
5811 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5812 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
5813 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
5814
5815 <blockquote><pre>
5816 CONCURRENCY=makefile
5817 </pre></blockquote>
5818
5819 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
5820 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
5821 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
5822 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
5823 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
5824 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
5825 make this happen.</p>
5826
5827 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
5828 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
5829 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
5830 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
5831 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
5832
5833 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
5834 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
5835 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
5836 fix the remaining issues.</p>
5837
5838 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
5839 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
5840 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
5841 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
5842
5843       </div>
5844       <div class="tags">
5845
5846
5847         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>.
5848
5849
5850       </div>
5851     </div>
5852     <div class="padding"></div>
5853
5854     <div class="entry">
5855       <div class="title">
5856         <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>
5857       </div>
5858       <div class="date">
5859         27th July 2009
5860       </div>
5861       <div class="body">
5862         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
5863 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
5864 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
5865 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
5866 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
5867 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
5868 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
5869
5870 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
5871 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
5872 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
5873
5874       </div>
5875       <div class="tags">
5876
5877
5878         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>.
5879
5880
5881       </div>
5882     </div>
5883     <div class="padding"></div>
5884
5885     <div class="entry">
5886       <div class="title">
5887         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
5888       </div>
5889       <div class="date">
5890         22nd July 2009
5891       </div>
5892       <div class="body">
5893         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
5894 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
5895 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
5896 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
5897 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
5898 the package up to date.</p>
5899
5900 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
5901 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
5902 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
5903 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
5904 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
5905 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
5906 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
5907 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
5908 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
5909 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
5910 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
5911 working on the future release.</p>
5912
5913 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
5914 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
5915
5916       </div>
5917       <div class="tags">
5918
5919
5920         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>.
5921
5922
5923       </div>
5924     </div>
5925     <div class="padding"></div>
5926
5927     <div class="entry">
5928       <div class="title">
5929         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
5930       </div>
5931       <div class="date">
5932         24th June 2009
5933       </div>
5934       <div class="body">
5935         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
5936 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
5937 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
5938 funded
5939 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
5940 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
5941 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
5942 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
5943 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
5944 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
5945
5946 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
5947 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
5948 boot:</p>
5949
5950 <ul>
5951
5952 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
5953
5954 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
5955    clock is in UTC.</li>
5956
5957 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
5958    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
5959    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
5960
5961 </ul>
5962
5963 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
5964 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
5965 Villegas</a>.
5966
5967 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
5968 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
5969 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
5970 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
5971 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
5972 using this.</p>
5973
5974 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
5975 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
5976 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
5977 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
5978 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
5979 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
5980 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
5981
5982       </div>
5983       <div class="tags">
5984
5985
5986         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>.
5987
5988
5989       </div>
5990     </div>
5991     <div class="padding"></div>
5992
5993     <div class="entry">
5994       <div class="title">
5995         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
5996       </div>
5997       <div class="date">
5998         17th May 2009
5999       </div>
6000       <div class="body">
6001         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
6002 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
6003 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
6004 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
6005 dager siden kom
6006 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
6007 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
6008 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
6009 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
6010 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
6011
6012 <blockquote>
6013 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
6014 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
6015 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
6016 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
6017 </blockquote>
6018
6019 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
6020 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
6021 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
6022 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
6023 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
6024
6025 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
6026 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
6027 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
6028
6029       </div>
6030       <div class="tags">
6031
6032
6033         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>.
6034
6035
6036       </div>
6037     </div>
6038     <div class="padding"></div>
6039
6040     <div class="entry">
6041       <div class="title">
6042         <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>
6043       </div>
6044       <div class="date">
6045          7th May 2009
6046       </div>
6047       <div class="body">
6048         <p>Kom over
6049 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
6050 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
6051 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
6052 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
6053 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
6054 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
6055 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
6056
6057       </div>
6058       <div class="tags">
6059
6060
6061         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>.
6062
6063
6064       </div>
6065     </div>
6066     <div class="padding"></div>
6067
6068     <div class="entry">
6069       <div class="title">
6070         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
6071       </div>
6072       <div class="date">
6073          2nd May 2009
6074       </div>
6075       <div class="body">
6076         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
6077 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
6078 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
6079 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
6080 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
6081 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
6082 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
6083 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
6084 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
6085 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
6086 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
6087 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
6088 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
6089 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
6090 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
6091 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
6092 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
6093 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
6094 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
6095 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
6096
6097 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
6098 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
6099 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
6100 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
6101 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
6102 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
6103 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
6104 betydelige.</p>
6105
6106       </div>
6107       <div class="tags">
6108
6109
6110         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>.
6111
6112
6113       </div>
6114     </div>
6115     <div class="padding"></div>
6116
6117     <div class="entry">
6118       <div class="title">
6119         <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>
6120       </div>
6121       <div class="date">
6122          2nd May 2009
6123       </div>
6124       <div class="body">
6125         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
6126 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
6127 do not yet know them.</p>
6128
6129 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
6130 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
6131 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
6132 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
6133 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
6134 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
6135 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
6136 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
6137 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
6138 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
6139 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
6140
6141 <p>The second one is
6142 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
6143 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
6144 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
6145 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
6146 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
6147 and the company behind it is running
6148 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
6149 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
6150 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
6151 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
6152 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
6153 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
6154 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
6155 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
6156
6157 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
6158 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
6159 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
6160 surrounded by today.</p>
6161
6162       </div>
6163       <div class="tags">
6164
6165
6166         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>.
6167
6168
6169       </div>
6170     </div>
6171     <div class="padding"></div>
6172
6173     <div class="entry">
6174       <div class="title">
6175         <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>
6176       </div>
6177       <div class="date">
6178         28th April 2009
6179       </div>
6180       <div class="body">
6181         <p>Julien Blache
6182 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
6183 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
6184 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
6185 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
6186 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
6187 properties.</p>
6188
6189       </div>
6190       <div class="tags">
6191
6192
6193         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>.
6194
6195
6196       </div>
6197     </div>
6198     <div class="padding"></div>
6199
6200     <div class="entry">
6201       <div class="title">
6202         <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>
6203       </div>
6204       <div class="date">
6205         30th March 2009
6206       </div>
6207       <div class="body">
6208         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
6209 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
6210 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
6211 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
6212 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
6213 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
6214 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
6215 application.</p>
6216
6217 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
6218 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
6219 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
6220 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
6221 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
6222 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
6223 blocked from doing so.</p>
6224
6225 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
6226 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
6227 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
6228 requirements change.</p>
6229
6230 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
6231 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
6232 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
6233
6234       </div>
6235       <div class="tags">
6236
6237
6238         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>.
6239
6240
6241       </div>
6242     </div>
6243     <div class="padding"></div>
6244
6245     <div class="entry">
6246       <div class="title">
6247         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
6248       </div>
6249       <div class="date">
6250         29th March 2009
6251       </div>
6252       <div class="body">
6253         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
6254 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
6255 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
6256 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
6257 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
6258 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
6259 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
6260 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
6261 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
6262 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
6263 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
6264 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
6265 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
6266 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
6267 now. :)</p>
6268
6269       </div>
6270       <div class="tags">
6271
6272
6273         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>.
6274
6275
6276       </div>
6277     </div>
6278     <div class="padding"></div>
6279
6280     <div class="entry">
6281       <div class="title">
6282         <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>
6283       </div>
6284       <div class="date">
6285         29th March 2009
6286       </div>
6287       <div class="body">
6288         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
6289 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
6290 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
6291 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
6292 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
6293 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
6294
6295 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
6296 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
6297 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
6298 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
6299 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
6300 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
6301 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
6302 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
6303 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
6304 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
6305 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
6306 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
6307 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
6308
6309 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
6310 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
6311 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
6312 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
6313
6314 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
6315 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
6316
6317 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
6318 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
6319 new IETF work group?</p>
6320
6321       </div>
6322       <div class="tags">
6323
6324
6325         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>.
6326
6327
6328       </div>
6329     </div>
6330     <div class="padding"></div>
6331
6332     <div class="entry">
6333       <div class="title">
6334         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
6335       </div>
6336       <div class="date">
6337         15th February 2009
6338       </div>
6339       <div class="body">
6340         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
6341 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
6342 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
6343 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
6344 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
6345 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
6346 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
6347 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
6348 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
6349 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
6350 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
6351 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
6352
6353       </div>
6354       <div class="tags">
6355
6356
6357         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>.
6358
6359
6360       </div>
6361     </div>
6362     <div class="padding"></div>
6363
6364     <div class="entry">
6365       <div class="title">
6366         <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>
6367       </div>
6368       <div class="date">
6369          7th December 2008
6370       </div>
6371       <div class="body">
6372         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
6373 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
6374 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
6375 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
6376 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
6377 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
6378 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
6379 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
6380
6381 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
6382 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
6383 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
6384 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
6385 of these cards.</p>
6386
6387       </div>
6388       <div class="tags">
6389
6390
6391         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>.
6392
6393
6394       </div>
6395     </div>
6396     <div class="padding"></div>
6397
6398     <div class="entry">
6399       <div class="title">
6400         <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>
6401       </div>
6402       <div class="date">
6403         25th November 2008
6404       </div>
6405       <div class="body">
6406         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
6407 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
6408 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
6409 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
6410 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
6411 notes are available on
6412 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
6413 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
6414 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
6415 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
6416 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
6417 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
6418 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
6419 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
6420 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
6421
6422 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
6423 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
6424
6425       </div>
6426       <div class="tags">
6427
6428
6429         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>.
6430
6431
6432       </div>
6433     </div>
6434     <div class="padding"></div>
6435
6436     <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>
6437     <div id="sidebar">
6438
6439
6440
6441 <h2>Archive</h2>
6442 <ul>
6443
6444 <li>2013
6445 <ul>
6446
6447 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
6448
6449 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
6450
6451 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
6452
6453 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
6454
6455 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
6456
6457 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
6458
6459 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (6)</a></li>
6460
6461 </ul></li>
6462
6463 <li>2012
6464 <ul>
6465
6466 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
6467
6468 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
6469
6470 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
6471
6472 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
6473
6474 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
6475
6476 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
6477
6478 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
6479
6480 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
6481
6482 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
6483
6484 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
6485
6486 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
6487
6488 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
6489
6490 </ul></li>
6491
6492 <li>2011
6493 <ul>
6494
6495 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
6496
6497 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
6498
6499 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
6500
6501 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
6502
6503 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
6504
6505 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
6506
6507 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
6508
6509 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
6510
6511 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
6512
6513 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
6514
6515 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
6516
6517 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
6518
6519 </ul></li>
6520
6521 <li>2010
6522 <ul>
6523
6524 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
6525
6526 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
6527
6528 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
6529
6530 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
6531
6532 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
6533
6534 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
6535
6536 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
6537
6538 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
6539
6540 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
6541
6542 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
6543
6544 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
6545
6546 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
6547
6548 </ul></li>
6549
6550 <li>2009
6551 <ul>
6552
6553 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
6554
6555 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
6556
6557 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
6558
6559 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
6560
6561 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
6562
6563 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
6564
6565 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
6566
6567 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
6568
6569 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
6570
6571 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
6572
6573 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
6574
6575 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
6576
6577 </ul></li>
6578
6579 <li>2008
6580 <ul>
6581
6582 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
6583
6584 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
6585
6586 </ul></li>
6587
6588 </ul>
6589
6590
6591
6592 <h2>Tags</h2>
6593 <ul>
6594
6595  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
6596
6597  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
6598
6599  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
6600
6601  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
6602
6603  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (7)</a></li>
6604
6605  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
6606
6607  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
6608
6609  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (83)</a></li>
6610
6611  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (137)</a></li>
6612
6613  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
6614
6615  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (9)</a></li>
6616
6617  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
6618
6619  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (209)</a></li>
6620
6621  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
6622
6623  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
6624
6625  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (11)</a></li>
6626
6627  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
6628
6629  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (37)</a></li>
6630
6631  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
6632
6633  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
6634
6635  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
6636
6637  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
6638
6639  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
6640
6641  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
6642
6643  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (234)</a></li>
6644
6645  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (153)</a></li>
6646
6647  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (8)</a></li>
6648
6649  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
6650
6651  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (44)</a></li>
6652
6653  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (65)</a></li>
6654
6655  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
6656
6657  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
6658
6659  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
6660
6661  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (7)</a></li>
6662
6663  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
6664
6665  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
6666
6667  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
6668
6669  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (29)</a></li>
6670
6671  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
6672
6673  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
6674
6675  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (43)</a></li>
6676
6677  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
6678
6679  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (7)</a></li>
6680
6681  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (15)</a></li>
6682
6683  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
6684
6685  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
6686
6687  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (38)</a></li>
6688
6689  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
6690
6691  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
6692
6693 </ul>
6694
6695
6696     </div>
6697     <p style="text-align: right">
6698  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
6699 </p>
6700
6701   </body>
6702 </html>