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14 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen
</a>
21 <h3>Entries tagged "debian".
</h3>
25 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo
</a>
31 <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen. Above the
32 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo, the grub menu of Ubuntu with
33 Linux kernel
3.2.0-
23 (ie probably version
12.04 LTS) was stuck on a
34 screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:
</p>
36 <p align=
"center"><img width=
"70%" src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
38 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
39 about this hidden Linux installation. It is interesting what
40 <a href=
"http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal
</a>.
</p>
46 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>.
51 <div class=
"padding"></div>
55 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version
0.17 is ready
</a>
61 <p>The
<a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project
</a>
62 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
63 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
64 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
68 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
69 new lsdvd release
</a>, available in git or from
70 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
71 download page
</a>. This is the changelog dated
2014-
10-
03 for version
76 <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks
</li>
77 <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
78 non-existant, to work around additional copy protection
</li>
79 <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles
</li>
80 <li>Fix pallete display of first entry
</li>
81 <li>Fix include orders
</li>
82 <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway
</li>
83 <li>Fix the chapter count
</li>
84 <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
85 the palette size is the same.
</li>
86 <li>Fix array printing.
</li>
87 <li>Correct subsecond calculations.
</li>
88 <li>Add sector information to the output format.
</li>
89 <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
90 with more GCC compiler warnings.
</li>
94 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
95 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
96 project the last nine years. Please check it out. :)
</p>
102 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
107 <div class=
"padding"></div>
111 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer
</a>
117 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
118 project
</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
119 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
120 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
121 boot of both clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
122 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
123 to mention here). We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
124 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
125 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
127 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
128 status
</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
129 work left. Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
130 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway. Here is a
131 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.
</p>
133 <p>First, download the test ISO via
134 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp
</a>,
135 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http
</a>
137 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-
1.iso).
138 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
139 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
140 install with some tweaking.
</p>
142 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
143 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run
</p>
146 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
147 </pre></blockquote></p>
149 <p>and add 'exit
0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
150 optimization. Return to the installation, select the profile you want
151 and continue. Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
152 due to a known bug in eatmydata.
</p>
154 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
155 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be. All my
156 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
159 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
160 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
161 education-desktop-XXX metapackage. XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
162 or mate. If you want several desktop options, install more than one
163 metapackage. Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
164 graphical login screen. This workaround should no longer be needed
165 once the education-tasks package version
1.801 enter testing in two
168 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
169 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
170 update the debian-cd git repository. The eatmydata, grub and desktop
171 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
172 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again. Well the
173 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled. The proper fix
174 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
175 provided in bug
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#
702711</a>.
176 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.
</p>
178 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
179 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
180 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.
</p>
186 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>.
191 <div class=
"padding"></div>
195 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool
</a>
201 <p>I use the
<a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool
</a>
202 to handle my fairly large DVD collection. It is a nice command line
203 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
204 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format. But lsdvd have not seen
205 any new development since
2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
206 its use with some DVDs. Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
207 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
208 project, without any reply. But I use it regularly and would like to
209 get
<a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
210 into Debian
</a>. So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
211 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
212 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
213 over. And yesterday, I became project admin.
</p>
215 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
216 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
217 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
218 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
219 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
220 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too. If you got
221 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
222 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source
</a> and join
223 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
230 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>.
235 <div class=
"padding"></div>
239 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert
</a>
245 <p>The
<a href=
"https://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> installer could be
246 a lot quicker. When we install more than
2000 packages in
247 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a> using
248 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
249 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
250 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #
613428</a> about too
251 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
252 responsible for unpacking the binary packages. Other parts (like code
253 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
254 installation. All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
255 me. If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
256 to salvage the half installed system. So the failure sync-ing is
257 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
258 relevant while the installer is running.
</p>
260 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
261 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
262 change the code in several packages. The idea is not new, but I have
263 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before. It
264 depend on the small and clever package
265 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata
</a>, which
266 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
267 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
268 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly. Instead of
269 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
270 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
271 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
272 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
273 "eatmydata
$program
$@", to get the same effect.
274 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
275 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.
</p>
277 <p>The effect was stunning. In my first test it reduced the running
278 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from
64 to less than
44
279 minutes (
20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
280 Latitude D505 machine. I am not quite sure what the optimised time
281 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
282 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
283 installation. As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
284 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
285 installation. I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
286 and got these results. The time measured is the time stamp in
287 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
288 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
289 yourself. In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
290 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
296 <th>Machine/setup
</th>
297 <th>Original tasksel
</th>
298 <th>Optimised tasksel
</th>
303 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE
</td>
304 <td>64 min (
07:
46-
08:
50)
</td>
305 <td><44 min (
11:
27-
12:
11)
</td>
310 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE
</td>
311 <td>57 min (
08:
48-
09:
45)
</td>
312 <td>34 min (
07:
43-
08:
17)
</td>
317 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal
</td>
318 <td>22 min (
10:
37-
10:
59)
</td>
319 <td>11 min (
11:
16-
11:
27)
</td>
324 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal
</td>
325 <td>6 min (
08:
19-
08:
25)
</td>
326 <td>4 min (
08:
04-
08:
08)
</td>
331 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE
</td>
332 <td>19 min (
09:
21-
09:
40)
</td>
333 <td>15 min (
10:
25-
10:
40)
</td>
339 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
340 time is spent downloading packages. The connection to the Internet
341 was
100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
342 significant factor in the measurement. Download typically took a few
343 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
346 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
347 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
348 Installer
</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
349 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
350 installation. I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
351 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
352 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
353 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO. The
354 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
355 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i. If the code is
356 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
357 for the entire installation.
</p>
359 <p>I've implemented this in the
360 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install
</a>
361 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
362 Debian Edu installation. If you want to test this yourself, you can
363 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb). One shell script
364 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:
</p>
369 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
371 logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
374 logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
377 apt-install eatmydata || true
378 if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
379 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
381 # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
382 if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
383 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
384 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
386 chmod
755 /target$file.edu
387 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
388 --rename --quiet --add $file
389 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
391 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
395 error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
400 </pre></blockquote></p>
402 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
403 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
407 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
409 logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
411 remove_install_override() {
412 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
414 if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
416 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
417 --rename --quiet --remove $file
420 error "Missing divert for $file."
423 sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
426 remove_install_override
427 </pre></blockquote></p>
429 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
430 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
431 finish-install.d scripts.
</p>
433 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
434 Debian installer too? I suspect it should, but am not sure the
435 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough. It also
436 depend on the side effects of the change. I'm not aware of any, but I
437 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
438 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
439 fsync() having effect? Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
440 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
443 <p>Update
2014-
09-
24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
444 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
445 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #
702711. An updated
446 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.
</p>
452 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>.
457 <div class=
"padding"></div>
461 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net
</a>
467 <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
468 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a> about
469 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
470 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net
</a>, and was very happy to
471 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
472 use when looking for peoples public key. So far I have used
473 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
474 were misbehaving, but those days are ended. The servers I have used
475 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable. I hope
476 those problems are gone now.
</p>
478 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
479 <a href=
"https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net
</a> service
480 there is a pool of more than
100 keyservers which are checked every
481 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date. It must be
482 better than what I have used so far. :)
</p>
484 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
485 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
486 not seem to be used in Debian. Perhaps it should?
</p>
488 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
492 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
493 </pre></blockquote></p>
495 <p>With GnuPG version
2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
496 entries in DNS. Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
497 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
498 keyserver automatically should their need it:
</p>
501 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
502 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record
0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
504 </pre></blockquote></p>
507 <a href=
"http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
508 HKP lookup protocol
</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
509 very happy. It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
510 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
511 another key. Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
512 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
513 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
514 This is as far as I can tell not possible today. Perhaps something
515 for a future version of the protocol?
</p>
521 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
526 <div class=
"padding"></div>
530 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook
</a>
536 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
537 project
</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
538 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
539 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation. This text is about how the
540 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.
</p>
542 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
543 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
544 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
545 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
546 in sync. And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
547 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
548 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
549 edit the documentation using a web browser. We also want it to be
550 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
551 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
552 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
555 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
556 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
557 wiki
</a>, as several wiki pages written in English. It consist of one
558 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
559 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
560 chapters together into one large web page (aka
561 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
562 AllInOne page
</a>). The AllInOne page is the one used for further
563 processing and translations. Thanks to the fact that the
564 <a href=
"http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin
</a> installation on
565 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
566 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format
</a>, we can fetch
567 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
568 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
569 manual. This process also download images and transform image
570 references to use the locally downloaded images. The generated
571 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
572 using the
<tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual
</tt> program, and the
573 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
574 a handfull of images. The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
575 and epub versions of the English manual. This is the basic step of
576 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
577 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
578 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.
</p>
580 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us. We want translated
581 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
582 track the English original. For this we use the
583 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml
</a> package,
584 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
585 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
586 translation tools used by those translating free software. The pot
587 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
588 files), which the translations update with the native language
589 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
590 original. The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
591 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
592 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
593 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml). This translated (or partly
594 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
595 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
596 of the documentation.
</p>
598 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files. We
600 <a href=
"http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize
</a>,
601 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
602 <a href=
"http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle
</a> or
603 <a href=
"https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex
</a>. All we care about
604 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository. Updated
605 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
606 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
607 against the debian-edu-doc package
</a>.
</p>
609 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
610 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
611 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
612 this regard). For this we transform the original PNG images to the
613 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
614 translated images by storing translated versions in
615 images/$LANGUAGECODE/. I am a bit unsure about the details here. The
616 package maintainers know more.
</p>
618 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
619 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
620 of the documentation packages on the web
</a>. See for example the
621 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
622 PDF version
</a> or the
623 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
624 HTML version
</a>. We do not yet build the epub version by default,
625 but perhaps it will be done in the future.
</p>
627 <p>To learn more, check out
628 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
629 debian-edu-doc package
</a>,
630 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
631 manual on the wiki
</a> and
632 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
633 translation instructions
</a> in the manual.
</p>
639 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
644 <div class=
"padding"></div>
648 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram
0.7)
</a>
654 <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
655 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
656 So I implemented one, using
657 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
658 package
</a>. To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
659 run tasksel as user root. You should be presented with a new option,
660 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)". When you
661 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
662 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.
<p>
664 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
665 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
666 packages to install. The first part is in
667 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc
</tt> and look like
673 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
674 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
676 Test-new-install: mark show
678 Packages: for-current-hardware
679 </pre></blockquote></p>
681 <p>The second part is in
682 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware
</tt> and look like
690 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
692 </pre></blockquote></p>
694 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
695 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
696 have installed on our machines. I've not been able to find a way to
697 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
698 before doing the installation. So if you are curious or careful,
699 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.
</p>
701 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
702 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
703 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
704 database (using the Modaliases header). The APT package database
705 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
706 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#
719837</a> and
707 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#
730704</a>). The cause is in
708 the python-apt code (bug
709 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#
745487</a>), but using a
710 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
711 reduce the memory leak from ~
30 MiB per hardware detection down to
712 around
2 MiB per hardware detection. It should make the desktop
713 daemon a lot more useful. The fix is in version
0.7 uploaded to
716 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
717 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
718 use the AppStream data source for this. A proposal for getting proper
719 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
720 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-
11</a>, and
721 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
722 project
</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation. I
723 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
724 start using the information when it is ready.
</p>
726 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
727 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
728 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
729 package
</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
731 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
732 blog posts tagged isenkram
</a> for details on the notation. I expect
733 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
734 moment I got no better place to store it.
</p>
740 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>.
745 <div class=
"padding"></div>
749 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid
</a>
755 <p>The
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
756 project
</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
757 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
758 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
759 encrypted and away from prying eyes. It is still going strong, and
760 today a major mile stone was reached.
</p>
762 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
763 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable. It was
764 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
765 during build and on the first boot. Now all one need to get going is
766 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
767 Debian. And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
768 build everything directly from Debian. :)
</p>
770 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
771 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup
</a>,
772 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth
</a>,
773 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite
</a>,
774 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor
</a>,
775 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy
</a>,
776 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud
</a> and
777 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq
</a>. There
778 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup. User
779 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki. Please
780 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
781 the manual
</a> and help us improve it.
</p>
783 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
784 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
788 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
789 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
791 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
793 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
796 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
797 devices. See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
798 details on the build. If you do not want all three images, trim the
799 make line. Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
800 virtualbox specific. It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
801 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment. You might need
802 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
803 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.
</p>
805 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
806 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
807 the preseed values:
</p>
810 url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
</a>
813 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
816 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
817 systemd as the boot system. It will become the default for Linux in
818 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox. I did
819 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
820 during boot when using systemd. I suspect there are other problems
821 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
822 be run from the plinth web interface.
</p>
824 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
825 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
826 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
827 irc.debian.org)
</a> and
828 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
829 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
835 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
840 <div class=
"padding"></div>
844 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software
</a>
850 <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
851 solution for use at home. My requirements are simple, it must be
852 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
853 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
854 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
855 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
856 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
857 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space. On top
858 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
859 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage. But
860 I never found time to implement such system. But the last few weeks I
861 have looked at a system called
862 <a href=
"https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL
</a>, a locally
863 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.
</p>
865 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
866 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
867 Google Drive or OpenStack API. There are heaps of such storage
868 providers. S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
869 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server. S3QL
870 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
871 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
872 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
873 while the content is stored in the cloud as well. This allow me to
874 have a backup that should survive fire. The file system can not be
875 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
876 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
877 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.
</p>
879 <p>It is simple to use. I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
880 package is included already. So to get started, run
<tt>apt-get
881 install s3ql
</tt>. Next, pick a storage provider. I ended up picking
882 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
883 <a href=
"https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
884 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service
</a>, because I trust the laws
885 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
886 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
887 in Iceland. Another nice recipe is available from the article
888 <a href=
"http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
889 Filesystem for HPC Storage
</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
890 Admin magazine. When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
891 the API key needed to connect to the storage API. With Greencloud,
892 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
895 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
896 system. First, create a new bucket in the cloud. This bucket is the
897 file system storage area. I picked a bucket name reflecting the
898 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
899 I'll refer to it as
<tt>bucket-name
</tt> below. In addition, one need
900 the API login and password, and a locally created password. Store it
901 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
905 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
906 backend-login: API-login
907 backend-password: API-password
908 fs-passphrase: local-password
909 </pre></blockquote></p>
911 <p>I create my local passphrase using
<tt>pwget
50</tt> or similar,
912 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
913 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
914 details and password to create it:
</p>
917 # mkdir -m
700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
918 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
919 --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
921 Enter backend password:
922 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
923 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
924 Enter encryption password:
925 Confirm encryption password:
926 Generating random encryption key...
927 Creating metadata tables...
937 Compressing and uploading metadata...
938 Wrote
0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
939 #
</pre></blockquote></p>
941 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
944 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
945 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name /s3ql
946 Using
4 upload threads.
947 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
957 Mounting filesystem...
959 Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
960 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
1.0T
0 1.0T
0% /s3ql
962 </pre></blockquote></p>
964 <p>The file system is now ready for use. I use rsync to store my
965 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
966 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
967 running rsync. To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
968 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
969 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
974 </pre></blockquote></p>
976 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
977 correct any problems detected. This can be used if the local server
978 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
979 mounted" flag. This is what it look like when processing a working
983 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
984 Using cached metadata.
985 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
986 Checking DB integrity...
987 Creating temporary extra indices...
988 Checking lost+found...
989 Checking cached objects...
990 Checking names (refcounts)...
991 Checking contents (names)...
992 Checking contents (inodes)...
993 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
994 Checking objects (reference counts)...
995 Checking objects (backend)...
996 ..processed
5000 objects so far..
997 ..processed
10000 objects so far..
998 ..processed
15000 objects so far..
999 Checking objects (sizes)...
1000 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
1001 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
1002 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
1003 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
1004 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
1005 Checking inodes (sizes)...
1006 Checking extended attributes (names)...
1007 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
1008 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
1009 Checking directory reachability...
1010 Checking unix conventions...
1011 Checking referential integrity...
1012 Dropping temporary indices...
1013 Backing up old metadata...
1023 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1024 Wrote
0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
1026 </pre></blockquote></p>
1028 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
1029 quick, about the same speed as local file access. Uploading large
1030 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
1031 house. Uploading
685 MiB with a
100 MiB cache gave me
305 kiB/s,
1032 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
1033 Debian installation ISO gave me
610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
1034 Both were measured using
<tt>dd
</tt>. So for me, the bottleneck is my
1035 network, not the file system code. I do not know what a good cache
1036 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
1039 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
1040 time. If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
1043 <p><blockquote><pre>
1044 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1045 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name /s3ql
1046 Using
8 upload threads.
1047 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
1049 </pre></blockquote></p>
1051 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
1052 metadata is uploaded once every
24 hour by default. To ensure the
1053 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
1054 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
1057 <p><blockquote><pre>
1058 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
1059 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
1061 </pre></blockquote></p>
1063 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
1064 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
1065 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
1068 <p><blockquote><pre>
1070 Directory entries:
9141
1073 Total data size:
22049.38 MB
1074 After de-duplication:
21955.46 MB (
99.57% of total)
1075 After compression:
21877.28 MB (
99.22% of total,
99.64% of de-duplicated)
1076 Database size:
2.39 MB (uncompressed)
1077 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
1079 </pre></blockquote></p>
1081 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
1082 storage. I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
1083 <a href=
"https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud
</a>,
1084 <a href=
"http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive
</a>,
1085 <a href=
"http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces
</a>,
1086 <a href=
"http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace
</a> and
1087 <a href=
"http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud
</A>. The latter even
1088 accept payment in Bitcoin. Pick one that suit your need. Some of
1089 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
1090 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
1093 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
1094 and posters discussing the S3QL file system. There are several, which
1095 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
1096 science community and increased my confidence in using it. One nice
1098 "
<a href=
"http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
1099 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
1100 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach
</a>" by Hsing-Bung
1101 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
1102 and Pamela Smith. Please have a look.</p>
1104 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
1105 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
1106 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
1107 it come to locking and umask handling etc). Running
1108 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html
">my
1109 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
1110 no error was found. So the file system can be used for home
1111 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
1113 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
1114 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
1115 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/
">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
1116 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client. It have
1117 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
1118 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
1119 only read from it.</p>
1121 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1122 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1123 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1129 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
1134 <div class="padding
"></div>
1138 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html
">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
1144 <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox
">Freedombox
1145 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
1146 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
1147 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
1148 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes. It has been
1149 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
1152 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
1153 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
1154 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
1155 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
1156 file. The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
1157 where most of the needed packages used are already present. Only one,
1158 the freedombox-setup package, is missing. To try to build your own
1159 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
1161 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap
</a>
1162 with a user with sudo access to become root:
1165 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1167 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1168 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1170 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1173 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1174 devices. See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
1175 want all three images, trim the make line. But note that thanks to
<a
1176 href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
1177 vmdebootstrap
</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
1180 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1181 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1182 the preseed values:
</p>
1185 url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
</a>
1188 <p>But note that due to
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
1189 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie
</a>, the installer will
1190 currently hang while setting up APT sources. Killing the
1191 '
<tt>apt-cdrom ident
</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
1192 installation will get the installation going. This affect all
1193 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.
</p>
1195 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1196 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1197 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
1198 irc.debian.org)
</a> and
1199 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1200 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
1206 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
1211 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1215 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release
1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)
</a>
1221 <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
1222 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
1223 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>. I called the project
1224 ng-utils, and it has served me well. I placed the project under the
1225 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer
</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
1226 repository. But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
1227 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
1228 proper home since then.
</p>
1230 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
1231 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
1232 a proper source control system. I applied for a project on
1233 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth
</a>, but did not have time
1234 to follow up on it. Until today. :)
</p>
1236 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
1237 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
1238 history of the project. I published all release tarballs and imported
1239 them into the git repository. As the project is really stable and not
1240 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
1241 release and call it
1.0. Visit the new project home on
1242 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/
</a>
1243 if you want to check it out. The new version is also uploaded into
1244 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable
</a>.
</p>
1250 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>.
1255 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1259 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd
</a>
1265 <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
1266 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
1267 boot system instead of their old one. This follow up on the
1268 <a href=
"https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
1269 Google Summer of Code work
</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
1270 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux. To get started,
1271 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
1272 <a href=
"http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz
</a>,
1273 and started it using virt-manager.
</p>
1275 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
1276 password) was to get the network operational. I followed
1277 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
1278 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page
</a> and ran these
1279 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
1280 kvm internal DHCP server:
</p>
1282 <p><blockquote><pre>
1283 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
1284 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $
2}')
1285 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $
2}')
1287 </pre></blockquote></p>
1289 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
1290 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
1291 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.
</p>
1293 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
1294 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
1295 set. Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
1296 compression from working. Remember to turn that off on the client
1299 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
1302 <p><blockquote><pre>
1303 cat
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list
<<EOF
1304 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
1307 apt-get dist-upgrade
1308 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
1309 sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
1310 update-alternatives --config runsystem
1311 </pre></blockquote></p>
1313 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
1314 <tt>reboot-hurd
</tt> instead of just
<tt>reboot
</tt>, as there is not
1315 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
1316 'reboot' command. After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
1317 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
1318 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
1319 start is no longer needed. But for some strange reason, there are no
1320 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
1323 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
1324 fail some times. No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
1325 figure it out. At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
1326 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem. A way to reduce
1327 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
1328 adding this repository to the machine:
</p>
1330 <p><blockquote><pre>
1331 cat
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list
<<EOF
1332 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
1334 </pre></blockquote></p>
1336 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
1337 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
1338 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
1339 BTS. This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:
</p>
1341 <p><blockquote><pre>
1342 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
1343 i emacs - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
1344 i gdb - GNU Debugger
1345 i hurd-recommended - Miscellaneous translators
1346 i isc-dhcp-client - ISC DHCP client
1347 i isc-dhcp-common - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
1348 i libc-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
1349 i libc-dev-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
1350 i libc0.3 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
1351 i A libc0.3-dbg - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
1352 i libc0.3-dev - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
1353 i multiarch-support - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
1354 i A x11-common - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
1355 i xorg - X.Org X Window System
1356 i A xserver-xorg - X.Org X server
1357 i A xserver-xorg-input-all - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
1359 </pre></blockquote></p>
1361 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
1362 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
1363 the porters instructions to fix it. This time I was interested in the
1364 command line stuff.
<p>
1370 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>.
1375 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1379 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release
0.16</a>
1385 <p><a href=
"http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity
</a> is a nice tool to
1386 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
1387 analysis. It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
1388 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
1389 the source. The company behind it provide
1390 <a href=
"https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
1391 a community service
</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
1392 already checked. A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
1393 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
1394 <a href=
"http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash
</a> and
1395 <a href=
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool
</a>
1396 projects I am involved with was already registered. But these are
1397 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
1398 check, and decided to
<a href=
"http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
1399 checking of the chrpath project
</a>. It was
1400 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects. Six of
1401 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
1402 error. Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
1403 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
1404 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
1405 the future end up in a library. Having fixed all defects and added
1406 <a href=
"https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
1407 mailing list for the chrpath developers
</a>, I decided it was time to
1408 publish a new release. These are the release notes:
</p>
1410 <p>New in
0.16 released
2014-
01-
14:
</p>
1414 <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.
</li>
1415 <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.
</li>
1416 <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.
</li>
1421 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
1422 new version
0.16 from alioth
</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
1423 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
1424 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
1425 include a test suite check.
</p>
1431 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1436 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1440 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release
0.15</a>
1446 <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
1447 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
1448 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
1449 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
1450 compiled ELF programs. The update was triggered by the persistence of
1451 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
1452 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc
64-bit Little Endian) he
1453 is working on. I checked the
1454 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian
</a>,
1455 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu
</a> and
1456 <a href=
"https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora
</a>
1457 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
1458 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
1459 These are the release notes:
</p>
1461 <p>New in
0.15 released
2013-
11-
24:
</p>
1465 <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
1466 with newer architectures. Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
1469 <li>Updated README with current URLs.
</li>
1471 <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
1472 Matthias Klose.
</li>
1474 <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
1475 Petr Machata found in Fedora.
</li>
1477 <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
1478 .dynamic is a NULL terminated string. Based on patch found in
1479 Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.
</li>
1484 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
1485 new version
0.15 from alioth
</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
1486 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
1487 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
1488 include a testsuite check.
</p>
1494 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1499 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1503 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog
</a>
1509 <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
1510 <a href=
"http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
1511 init.d scripts
</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
1512 init.d scripts at all. Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
1513 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:
</p>
1516 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
1519 # Required-Start: $remote_fs $time
1520 # Required-Stop: umountnfs $time
1521 # X-Stop-After: sendsigs
1522 # Default-Start:
2 3 4 5
1523 # Default-Stop:
0 1 6
1524 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
1525 # Description: Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
1526 # It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
1527 # used as a drop-in replacement.
1529 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
1530 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
1533 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
1534 script was
137 lines, and the above is just
15 lines, most of it meta
1537 <p>How to do this, you ask? Well, one create a new script
1538 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
1543 # Define LSB log_* functions.
1544 # Depend on lsb-base (
>=
3.2-
14) to ensure that this file is present
1545 # and status_of_proc is working.
1546 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
1549 # Function that starts the daemon/service
1555 #
0 if daemon has been started
1556 #
1 if daemon was already running
1557 #
2 if daemon could not be started
1558 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test
> /dev/null \
1560 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
1563 # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
1564 # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
1565 # on this one. As a last resort, sleep for some time.
1569 # Function that stops the daemon/service
1574 #
0 if daemon has been stopped
1575 #
1 if daemon was already stopped
1576 #
2 if daemon could not be stopped
1577 # other if a failure occurred
1578 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/
30/KILL/
5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
1580 [ "$RETVAL" =
2 ] && return
2
1581 # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
1582 # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
1583 # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
1584 # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
1585 # needed by services started subsequently. A last resort is to
1586 # sleep for some time.
1587 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=
0/
30/KILL/
5 --exec $DAEMON
1588 [ "$?" =
2 ] && return
2
1589 # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
1595 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
1599 # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
1600 # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
1601 # then implement that here.
1603 start-stop-daemon --stop --signal
1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
1608 scriptbasename="$(basename $
1)"
1609 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
1610 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
1618 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
1619 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
1621 # Exit if the package is not installed
1622 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit
0
1624 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
1625 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
1627 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
1632 [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
1635 0|
1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
0 ;;
1636 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
1 ;;
1640 [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
1643 0|
1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
0 ;;
1644 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
1 ;;
1648 status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit
0 || exit $?
1650 #reload|force-reload)
1652 # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
1653 # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
1655 #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
1659 restart|force-reload)
1661 # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
1662 # 'force-reload' alias
1664 log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
1671 1) log_end_msg
1 ;; # Old process is still running
1672 *) log_end_msg
1 ;; # Failed to start
1682 echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}"
>&
2
1690 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
1691 lot. I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
1692 work out of the box, but you get the idea. I did not try very hard to
1693 optimize it nor make it more robust either.
</p>
1695 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
1696 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
1697 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
1698 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially. The boot
1699 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.
</p>
1705 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>.
1710 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1714 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian
</a>
1720 <p><a href=
"http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol
</a> for
1721 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
1722 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
1723 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
1724 missing in Debian. The
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
1725 for a package
</a> was from
2012-
04-
10 with no progress since
1726 2013-
04-
01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
1727 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
1728 repository to get a package I could use. I would very much like
1729 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
1730 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
1731 NEW. I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.
</p>
1733 <p>The source is now available from
1734 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary
</a>.
</p>
1740 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>.
1745 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1749 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images
</a>
1756 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap
</a>
1757 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images. It
1758 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
1759 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
1760 stick. Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
1761 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi
</a>, as part
1762 of a plan to simplify the build system for
1763 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
1764 project
</a>. The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
1765 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
1766 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
1769 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
1770 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
1771 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
1772 Debian laptop. I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
1773 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
1774 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
1775 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi
</a>. First, the
1776 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler
</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
1777 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
1778 generated chroot before running the second stage. This allow
1779 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host. Next I added
1780 two new options
<tt>--bootsize size
</tt> and
<tt>--boottype
1781 fstype
</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
1782 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
1783 partition for the /boot/ stuff. I also added a
<tt>--variant
1784 variant
</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
1785 Debian base system packages installed. Finally, I added an option
1786 <tt>--no-extlinux
</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
1787 as a boot loader. It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
1788 most other non-x86 architectures. The changes were accepted by the
1789 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
1791 <a href=
"http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
1792 upstream project page
</a>.
</p>
1794 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
1795 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
1796 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
1801 set -e # Exit on first error
1804 cat
<<EOF
> etc/apt/sources.list
1805 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
1807 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi. This
1808 # install a kernel somewhere too.
1809 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
1810 -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1811 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
1812 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
1813 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
1814 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
1817 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
1818 to build the image:
</p>
1821 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
1824 --distribution jessie \
1825 --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
1834 --root-password raspberry \
1835 --hostname raspberrypi \
1836 --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
1837 --customize `pwd`/customize \
1839 --package git-core \
1840 --package binutils \
1841 --package ca-certificates \
1846 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
1847 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
1848 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
1849 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant. I really wish there was a way to
1850 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
1851 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
1852 using a non-free binary blob.
</p>
1854 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
1855 probably a few others installed. I have not checked the complete
1856 build dependency list.
</p>
1858 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
1859 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
1860 optimized for that use. So the images created will be a bit slower
1861 than
<a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian
</a> based images.
</p>
1867 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network
</a>.
1872 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1876 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway
</a>
1882 <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
1883 wider attention. I recommend signing and donating to each one of
1886 <p>Via
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
1887 Project News for
2013-
10-
14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
1888 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
1889 more women involved in free software. One debian sponsor has offered
1890 to match
<a href=
"http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
1891 earmarked
</a> for this initiative. I donated a few minutes ago, and
1892 hope you will to. :)
</p>
1894 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
1895 create
<a href=
"https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
1896 documentaries about the excessive spying
</a> on every Internet user that
1897 take place these days, and their need to fund the work. I've already
1898 donated. Are you next?
</p>
1900 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
1901 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
1902 statement under the heading
1903 <a href=
"http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
1904 Access
</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
1905 Norwegian government. So far
499 signatures. I hope you will sign it
1912 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
1917 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1921 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning
</a>
1927 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
1928 project
</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
1929 vision, ideas and solution several places. Here is a little
1930 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.
</p>
1934 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
1935 2,
5 minute marketing film
</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1937 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
1938 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news
2011</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1940 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
1941 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
1942 Web
2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting
2010</a>
1945 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem
2011
1946 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox
</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1948 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
1949 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz
2011</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1951 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
1952 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
1953 York City in
2012</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1955 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
1956 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in
2012</a>
1959 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
1960 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat,
2012</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1962 <li><a href=
"https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
1963 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem
2013</a> (FOSDEM)
</li>
1965 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
1966 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
1967 2013</a> (Youtube)
</li>
1971 <p>A larger list is available from
1972 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
1973 Freedombox Wiki
</a>.
</p>
1975 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
1976 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
1977 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
1978 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
1979 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
1980 pending in NEW. The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
1981 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload. Join
1982 us on
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
1983 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)
</a> and
1984 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1985 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
1991 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
1996 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2000 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi
</a>
2006 <p>I was introduced to the
2007 <a href=
"http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project
</a>
2008 in
2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
2009 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
2010 within the legal protection of their own homes. The idea is to give
2011 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
2012 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture. Instead of
2013 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
2014 control over their own basic infrastructure.
</p>
2016 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
2017 taken priority. But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
2018 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
2019 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
2020 actually started working on the project a while back.
</p>
2022 <p>The
<a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
2023 Debian initiative
</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
2024 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
2025 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
2026 communication. The initial deployment platform have been the
2027 <a href=
"http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug
</a>,
2028 which is a piece of hardware I do not own. So to be able to test what
2029 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
2030 it on some hardware I do have access to. I have rewritten the
2031 <a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker
</a>
2032 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
2033 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
2034 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
2035 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
2036 missing in Debian).
</p>
2038 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
2040 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup
</a>),
2041 and a administrative web interface
2042 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth
</a> + exmachina +
2043 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
2044 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy
</a>
2045 (freedombox-privoxy). There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
2046 client (
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat
</a>)
2047 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
2048 (
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd
</a>). The
2049 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
2050 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc. Not much of
2051 this is really working yet, see
2052 <a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
2053 project TODO
</a> for links to GIT repositories. Most of the code is
2054 on github at the moment. The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
2055 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
2056 users. I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
2057 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
2058 with lots of half baked features.
</p>
2060 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
2061 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
2064 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64
</strong></p>
2068 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.
</li>
2069 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.
</li>
2070 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
2071 to the Debian installer:
<p>
2072 <pre>url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat
</a></pre></li>
2074 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
2077 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
2078 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.
</li>
2082 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian
</strong></p>
2086 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.
</li>
2087 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.
</li>
2088 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:
</p>
2090 deb
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox
</a> wheezy main
2092 <li><p>Run this as root:
</p>
2094 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
2097 apt-get install freedombox-setup
2098 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
2100 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.
</li>
2104 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
2105 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
2106 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
2107 in my APT repository. But do not let this stop you. It is only a
2108 short "
<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy
</tt>" away. :)</p>
2110 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
2111 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
2112 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
2113 disable
</tt>" as root.</p>
2115 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
2116 problems. We gather on the IRC channel
2117 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:
6667/%
23freedombox
">#freedombox</a> on
2118 irc.debian.org and the
2119 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
">project
2120 mailing list</a>.</p>
2122 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
2123 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
2124 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
2125 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
2126 to look at the rest of plinth. The default user is 'admin' and the
2127 default password is 'secret'.</p>
2133 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox
">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance
">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
2138 <div class="padding
"></div>
2142 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html
">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
2148 <p>Earlier, I reported about
2149 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html
">my
2150 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>. Friday I was
2151 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away. And as
2152 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
2153 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
2154 currently on the disk.</p>
2156 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
2157 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=
3472&DwnldID=
18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+
520+Series+(
180GB%
2c+
2.5in+SATA+
6Gb%
2fs%
2c+
25nm%
2c+MLC)&lang=eng
">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
2158 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
2159 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
2160 disks. I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
2161 booted the ISO from a USB stick. The disk was recognized, but the
2162 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
2163 to insert any Intel firmware. So no change, and the disk is still
2164 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
2165 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware. No idea how likely
2166 that is. Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness. I
2167 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
2168 the broken disks.</p>
2174 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>.
2179 <div class="padding
"></div>
2183 <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>
2189 <p>Today I switched to
2190 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html
">my
2191 new laptop</a>. I've previously written about the problems I had with
2192 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
2193 <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
2194 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
2195 sustained writes. My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
2196 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
2197 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
2198 disk instead to fix it once and for all. The Samsung disk survived
2199 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
2200 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
2201 decided to trust it with my data. I have installed it as a Debian Edu
2202 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
2203 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
2204 station from now on.</p>
2206 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
2207 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
2208 performance and increase life time of the disk. The Linux kernel and
2209 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
2210 environment. To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
2211 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning. The
2212 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git
">source
2213 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
2214 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
2215 package. If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
2216 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
2217 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
2219 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
2220 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD. It is adjusted to my use case,
2221 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
2222 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
2223 top of this again. See the README file in the package source for the
2224 references I used to pick the settings. At the moment these
2225 parameters are tuned:</p>
2229 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
2230 (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
2232 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
2233 this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
2234 0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
2236 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
2239 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
2242 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
2244 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
2247 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
2248 to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
2252 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
2253 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
2254 little gain. My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
2255 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
2256 computer. I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
2257 from getting the data on the disk (see
2258 <a href="http://xkcd.com/
538/
">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
2259 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
2260 right thing to do.</p>
2262 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
2263 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
2264 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
2266 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
2267 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
2268 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
2269 instead of during my work.</p>
2271 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
2272 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
2274 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning. I expect
2275 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
2276 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
2278 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
2281 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
2282 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
2283 disk. It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
2284 the Lenovo firmware. But I have not tried and did not want to do so
2285 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
2286 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
2293 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>.
2298 <div class="padding
"></div>
2302 <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>
2308 <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
2309 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html
">the
2310 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
2311 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
2312 sustained write. My supplier is in contact with
2313 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/
">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
2314 replacement disk to try to fix the problem. They decided to send an
2315 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
2317 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
2318 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it. The new disk have the
2319 same firmware version as the original. This time my hope raised
2320 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
2321 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
2322 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%. But around 60%, the disk
2323 died again and I was back on square one. I still do not have a new
2324 laptop with a disk I can trust. I can not live with a disk that might
2325 lock up when I download a new
2326 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
2327 other large files. I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
2328 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
2330 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
2331 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
2332 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
2333 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
2334 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD
180G
5V
1A, ASM P/N
0C38732, FRU
2335 P/N
45N8295, P0C38732.
</p>
2337 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD
520 Series
180 GB,
2338 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-
302, FW:
2339 LF1i,
22APR2013, PBA: G39779-
300, LBA
351,
651,
888, LI P/N:
0C38722,
2340 Pb-free
2LI, LC P/N:
16-
200366, WWN:
55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
2341 SSDSC2BW180A3L
2.5"
6Gb/s SATA SSD
180G
5V
1A, ASM P/N
0C38732, FRU
2342 P/N
45N8295, P0C38732.
</p>
2344 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
2345 SA, date and WNPP values. Mentioning all the details here in case
2346 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
2347 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
2354 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>.
2359 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2363 <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>
2369 <p>The upcoming Saturday,
2013-
07-
13, we are organising a combined
2370 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
2371 party in Oslo. It is organised by
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">the
2372 member assosiation NUUG
</a> and
2373 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2374 project
</a> together with
<a href=
"http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
2377 <p>It starts
10:
00 and continue until late evening. Everyone is
2378 welcome, and there is no fee to participate. There is on the other
2379 hand limited space, and only room for
30 people. Please put your name
2380 on
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
2381 wiki page
</a> if you plan to join us.
</p>
2387 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>.
2392 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2396 <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>
2402 <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
2403 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
2404 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41
</a>. Unfortunately I did not have much
2405 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
2406 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
2408 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230
</a>
2409 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
2410 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
2411 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
2414 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2415 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2416 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
2417 feature at
<a href=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt
</a>, which
2418 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2419 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
2420 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
2421 disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
2422 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.
</p>
2424 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
2425 X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
2426 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
2427 hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
2428 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
2429 I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
2430 needed a new laptop now. :)
</p>
2432 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
2433 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.
</p>
2435 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The
180 GB SSD disk
2436 lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
2437 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
2438 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
2439 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
2440 default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
2441 reported to Debian as
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
2442 report #
691427 2012-
10-
25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
2443 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
2444 kernel developers as
2445 <a href=
"https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
2446 report #
51861 2012-
12-
20</a> (Intel SSD
520 stops working under load
2447 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
2448 Lenovo forums, both for
2449 <a href=
"http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
2450 2012-
11-
10</a> and for
2451 <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
2452 03-
20-
2013</a>. The problem do not only affect installation. The
2453 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
2454 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
2455 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
2457 <a href=
"https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
2458 available
</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
2459 minutes by writing to a file.
</p>
2461 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
2462 contacting PCHELP Norway (request
01D1FDP) which handle support
2463 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
2464 firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
2465 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
2466 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
2473 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>.
2478 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2482 <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>
2488 <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
2489 trusty old Thinkpad X41. Unfortunately I did not have much time to
2490 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived. I ended up
2491 picking a
<a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
2492 X230
</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu
2493 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly. As I write
2494 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
2495 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
2496 with an expencive door stop.
</p>
2498 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
2499 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
2500 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
2501 feature at
<ahref=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt
</a>, which
2502 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
2503 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
2504 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.
</p>
2506 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
2507 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
2508 to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly good and the
2509 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
2510 used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
2511 new laptop now. :)
</p>
2513 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.
</p>
2519 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>.
2524 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2528 <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>
2534 <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
2535 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
2536 working. One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
2537 needed to get the hardware on my computer working. Most often this
2538 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
2539 controller or the ethernet card. Today I pushed version
0.4 of the
2540 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package
</a>
2541 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
2542 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
2543 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
2544 debian packages. Here is a test run on my laptop:
</p>
2547 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
2548 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
2549 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
2550 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
2551 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
2552 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
2555 Preconfiguring packages ...
2556 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
2557 (Reading database ...
259727 files and directories currently installed.)
2558 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
2559 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (
0.28+squeeze1) ...
2563 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
2564 printed instead:
</p>
2567 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
2568 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
2572 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
2573 me some time when setting up new machines. :)
</p>
2575 <p>So, how does it work? It look at the set of currently loaded
2576 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
2577 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information. Next, it
2578 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
2579 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
2580 requested firmware file. If the package is in the non-free section, a
2581 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
2582 <tt>apt-get install
</tt>. The end result is a slightly better working
2585 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
2586 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
2587 finally fix
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
2588 #
655507</a>. There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
2589 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
2590 from the nearby Debian mirror.
</p>
2596 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram
</a>.
2601 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2605 <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>
2611 <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
2612 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
2613 or on first boot from the hard disk. I've seen it once in a while the
2614 last few years, but only recently understood the cause. I've seen it
2615 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
2616 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops. The system to
2617 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
2618 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead. I do
2619 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
2620 i915 driver used by the
2621 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
2622 EasyNote LV
</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.
</p>
2624 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways. Either by adding
2625 i915.invert_brightness=
1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
2626 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=
1
2627 option when it load the i915 kernel module. On Debian and Ubuntu, it
2628 can be done by running these commands as root:
</p>
2631 echo options i915 invert_brightness=
1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
2632 update-initramfs -u -k all
2635 <p>Since March
2012 there is
2636 <a href=
"http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
2637 mechanism in the Linux kernel
</a> to tell the i915 driver which
2638 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
2639 brightness setting automatically. To use it, one need to add a row in
2640 <a href=
"http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
2641 intel_quirks array
</a> in the driver source
2642 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c
</tt> (look for "
<tt>static
2643 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks
</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
2644 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
2647 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
2648 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
2651 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
2652 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
2653 (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
2654 Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
2655 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
2656 ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
2657 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
2658 <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
2660 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
2661 Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
2662 Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
2663 Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
2664 Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
2665 Capabilities: <access denied>
2666 Kernel driver in use: i915
2669 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
2672 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
2674 /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
2675 { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
2680 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
2681 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
2682 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
2683 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel
">dri-devel
2684 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
2685 developers. But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
2687 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/
2013-June/thread.html
">the
2688 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
2689 emails from non-subscribers. Because of this, I sent my patch also to
2690 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
2691 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
2692 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
2694 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
2695 with this problem working properly with Linux. If you use Gnome, your
2696 worries should be over at this point. But if you use KDE, there is
2697 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
2698 the screen during login. I've reported it to Debian as
2699 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
2700 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
2701 this. Perhaps you can help? Perhaps you know what the Gnome
2702 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
2703 developers? Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
2704 during login? If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
2705 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
2707 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
2708 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
2709 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
2710 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
2717 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
2722 <div class="padding
"></div>
2726 <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>
2732 <p>Two days ago, I asked
2733 <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
2734 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
2735 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>. I found a solution, but am horrified
2736 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
2739 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
2740 secure booting or fast boot. I suspect fast boot was the problem,
2741 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
2742 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
2745 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
2746 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive! This is as far as I
2747 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
2748 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement. I am told (and
2749 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
2750 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8. But as I believe the terms
2751 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
2752 was never an alternative. I do not enter agreements I do not intend
2755 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
2756 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
2757 work. But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
2758 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops. Is
2759 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
2760 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
2761 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms? Or at least not
2762 without risking to loose the warranty?
</p>
2765 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
2766 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV
</a>, to ensure the next person
2767 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
2770 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
2771 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.
</p>
2777 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>.
2782 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2786 <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>
2792 <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days. I bought three
2793 new laptops for my parents and a few others. I bought Packard Bell
2794 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer. But I
2795 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it. The
2796 computer is preinstalled with Windows
8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
2797 instead of a BIOS to boot.
</p>
2799 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
2800 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick. I have yet
2801 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work. when I turn on
2802 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
2803 the normal boot menu. I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
2804 USB stick booting. When booting, it first ask for the language to
2805 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
2806 Windows
8 terms of use. As these terms are completely unacceptable to
2807 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
2808 to get it to boot the Linux installer.
</p>
2810 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
2811 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
2812 EasyNote LV
</a> model. If you have any idea how to get Linux
2813 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
2814 page. If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
2815 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.
</p>
2817 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
2818 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
2825 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>.
2830 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2834 <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>
2840 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is
2841 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It
2842 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
2843 pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server,
2844 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
2845 educational software. The project was founded almost
12 years ago,
2846 2001-
07-
02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for
2847 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
2848 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
2849 donate some money
</a>.
2851 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
2852 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
2853 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn't very
2854 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
2855 the Debian Edu installer.
</p>
2858 <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/>
2859 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
2860 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
2861 into a Debian Edu Workstation:
</p>
2865 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.
</li>
2866 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.
</li>
2867 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
2868 our configuration.
</li>
2869 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
2870 /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
2871 according to the profile specified in the config above,
2872 overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.
</li>
2873 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
2874 that could not be done using preseeding.
</li>
2875 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.
</li>
2879 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
2880 replicated like this. Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
2881 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
2882 the needed packages.
</p>
2884 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
2885 setting up
<a href=
"http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi
</a> as a
2886 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
2887 <a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage">Raspbian
</a> installation and
2888 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
2889 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).
</p>
2891 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
2892 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
2893 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:
</p>
2896 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
2900 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
2901 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
2902 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
2909 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>.
2914 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2918 <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>
2925 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
2926 announced a
</a> new
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
2927 channel #debian-lego
</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
2928 community interested in
<a href=
"http://www.lego.com/">LEGO
</a>, the
2929 marvellous construction system from Denmark. We also created
2930 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page
</a> to have
2931 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes. And several
2932 people showed up to help. I was very happy to see the effect of my
2933 call. Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
2934 <a href=
"http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego
</a>
2935 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count
10 packages related to
2936 LEGO and
<a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms
</a>:
</p>
2939 <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>
2940 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad
</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software
</td></tr>
2941 <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>
2942 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd
</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS
</td></tr>
2943 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc
</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
</td></tr>
2944 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc
</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX
</td></tr>
2945 <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>
2946 <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>
2947 <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>
2948 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n
</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
</td></tr>
2951 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
2952 currently available in Jessie/testing. leocad is so far only
2953 available in experimental.
</p>
2955 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
2956 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
2957 for LEGO designers.
</p>
2963 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>.
2968 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2972 <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>
2978 <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
2979 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
2980 for Debian Wheezy
</a> was waiting in my mail box. This is a great
2981 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
2984 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
2985 in particular make me very happy to see included. The
2986 <a href=
"http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch
</a> program, made famous by
2987 the
<a href=
"http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code
</a> movement, is
2988 included for the first time. Alongside similar programs like
2989 <a href=
"http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle
</a> and
2990 <a href=
"http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart
</a>,
2991 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
2992 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
2993 computer. Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
2996 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
2997 Edu/Skolelinux release too. The
2998 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
2999 alpha release
</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
3006 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>.
3011 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3015 <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>
3021 <p>Today the
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
3022 package
</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
3023 for many months. I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
3024 2013-
01-
27, and today it was accepted into the archive.
</p>
3026 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
3027 install to work with a pluggable hardware device. The suggestion pop
3028 up when the device is plugged in. For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
3029 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
3030 the NXT controller. Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
3037 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>.
3042 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3046 <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>
3053 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
3054 bitcoin related blog post
</a> mentioned that the new
3055 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package
</a> for
3056 Debian was waiting in NEW. It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
3057 2013-
01-
19, and have been available in unstable since then. It was
3058 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
3061 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
3062 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
3063 architectures. For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
3064 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
3065 architectures (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #
672524</a>).
3066 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
3067 no-one have been able to propose a fix. If you got an idea what is
3068 failing, please let us know via the BTS.
</p>
3070 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
3071 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
3072 if it run short on space (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
3073 #
696715</a>). So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
3076 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3077 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3078 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
3084 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>.
3089 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3093 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!
</a>
3100 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
3101 for testers
</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
3102 pluggable hardware devices, which I
3103 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
3104 out to create
</a> earlier this month. Several valuable testers showed
3105 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
3106 people. But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
3107 for this project. Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
3108 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name. In the
3109 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
3110 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint
</a>
3111 repository in Debian. The new name? It is
<strong>Isenkram
</strong>.
3112 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use
</p>
3115 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
3116 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
3119 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet. If you
3120 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
3121 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
3122 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)
</p>
3124 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
3125 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc. Typical hardware
3126 stuff, in other words. I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
3127 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
3130 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
3131 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
3134 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
3135 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.
</p>
3141 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>.
3146 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3150 <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>
3156 <p>Early this month I set out to try to
3157 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
3158 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices
</a>. Now my
3159 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience. To test
3161 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
3162 from the Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>, build and install the
3163 package. You might have to log out and in again activate the
3164 autostart script.
</p>
3166 <p>The design is simple:
</p>
3170 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
3171 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.
</li>
3173 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
3174 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
3177 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
3178 the APT database, a database
3179 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
3180 via HTTP
</a> and a database available as part of the package.
</li>
3182 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
3183 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
3184 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
3185 package or packages.
</li>
3187 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
3188 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.
</li>
3190 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
3191 package while showing progress information in a window.
</li>
3195 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system. Here
3196 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action. First the
3197 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
3198 approve all the dependencies. Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.
</p>
3200 <p><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
3201 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
3202 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
3203 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
3204 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width=
"70%"></p>
3206 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
3207 is already useful. The database of hardware to package mappings also
3208 need more work. It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
3209 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
3210 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
3211 method. I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
3212 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
3213 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.
</p>
3215 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
21 16:
50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
3216 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
3218 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
3219 hw-support-handler; debuild
</tt>'. If you lack debuild, install the
3220 devscripts package.
</p>
3222 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
23 12:
00</strong>: The project is now
3223 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
3224 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository. See
3225 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
3226 instructions
</a> for details.
</p>
3232 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>.
3237 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3241 <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>
3247 <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and
3248 suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
3249 black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a
3250 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both
3251 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the
3252 Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep
3253 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
3254 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
3255 not a durable solution.
3257 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I
3258 got a new one more than
10 years ago. It still holds true.:)
</p>
3262 <li>Lightweight (around
1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
3264 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.
</li>
3265 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.
</li>
3266 <li>Long battery life time. Preferable a week.
</li>
3267 <li>Internal WIFI network card.
</li>
3268 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.
</li>
3269 <li>Some USB slots (
2-
3 is plenty)
</li>
3270 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.
</li>
3271 <li>Video resolution at least
1024x768, with size around
12" (A4 paper
3273 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
3274 X.org packages.
</li>
3275 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
3280 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
3281 list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
3282 last
10-
15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
3283 at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as
3284 robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
3285 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
3286 Lenovo took over. But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
3287 still be useful.
</p>
3289 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
3290 external keyboard? I'll have to check the
3291 <a href=
"http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site
</a> for
3292 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
3293 of the vendors listed on the
<a href=
"http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
3294 Pre-loaded site
</a>.
</p>
3300 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>.
3305 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3309 <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>
3315 <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
3316 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
3317 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
3318 done by Ubuntu
</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
3319 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
3320 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
3321 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:
</p>
3327 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
3332 version = pkg.candidate
3334 version = pkg.installed
3337 record = version.record
3338 if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
3340 mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
3341 for t in mime_types:
3342 t = t.rstrip().strip()
3344 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
3346 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
3347 if
1 < len(sys.argv):
3348 mimetype = sys.argv[
1]
3349 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
3350 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
3354 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:
</p>
3357 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
3358 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
3360 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
3361 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
3362 browser-plugin-gnash
3366 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
3367 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
3368 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
3369 anyone working on adding it?
</p>
3371 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
18 14:
20</strong>: The Debian BTS
3372 request for icweasel support for this feature is
3373 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#
484010</a> from
2008 (and
3374 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#
698426</a> from today). Lack
3375 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
3376 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.
</p>
3382 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>.
3387 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3391 <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>
3397 <p>The
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-
11
3398 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive
</a>, is a
3399 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
3400 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
3401 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
3402 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
3403 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
3404 downloaded by the browser.
</p>
3406 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
3407 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
3408 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
3410 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
3411 site
</a>. Using the collected information, it become possible to
3412 answer the question in the title. Here are the
20 most supported MIME
3413 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
3414 The complete list is available from the link above.
</p>
3416 <p><strong>Debian Stable:
</strong></p>
3420 ----- -----------------------
3436 18 application/x-ogg
3443 <p><strong>Debian Testing:
</strong></p>
3447 ----- -----------------------
3463 18 application/x-ogg
3470 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:
</strong></p>
3474 ----- -----------------------
3491 18 application/x-ogg
3497 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
3498 information mentioned in DEP-
11. I have not yet had time to look at
3499 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
3502 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
16 13:
35</strong>: Updated numbers after
3503 discovering a typo in my script.
</p>
3509 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>.
3514 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3518 <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>
3524 <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
3525 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
3526 values provided by the Linux kernel
</a> following my hope for
3527 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
3528 dongle support in Debian
</a>. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
3529 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
3530 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
3531 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
3532 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
3535 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
3536 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
3537 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
3541 Package: package-name
3542 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)
</p>
3545 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
3546 for a given modalias value using this file.
</p>
3548 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
3549 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class
0E01):
</p>
3553 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)
</p>
3556 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
3557 CardBus bridge (bus class
0607) PCI device is present:
</p>
3560 Package: pcmciautils
3561 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
3564 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
3565 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs
04D8:F8DA:
</p>
3568 Package: colorhug-client
3569 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)
</p>
3572 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
3573 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
3574 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.
</p>
3576 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
3577 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
3578 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
3579 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
3580 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I've
3581 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
3582 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
3585 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
3586 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
3587 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
3588 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
3590 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup
</a>
3591 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
3592 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
3593 repository where I currently work on my prototype.
</p>
3595 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
3596 install yubikey-personalization:
</p>
3599 % ./hw-support-lookup
3600 <br>yubikey-personalization
3604 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
3605 propose to install the pcmciautils package:
</p>
3608 % ./hw-support-lookup
3613 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
3614 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
3615 database
</a>, please tell me about it.
</p>
3617 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
3618 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
3619 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
3620 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
3621 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
3622 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
3623 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
3626 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
3627 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
3628 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
3629 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
3635 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>.
3640 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3644 <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>
3650 <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
3651 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
3652 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
3653 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
3655 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
3656 Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>:
3658 <p><strong>Modalias decoded
</strong></p>
3660 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
3661 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
3662 <URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias
</a> >,
3663 <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> >,
3664 <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> > and
3665 <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> >.
3667 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
3668 this shell script:
</p>
3671 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u
3674 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
3678 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
3679 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
3680 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
3684 <p><strong>PCI subtype
</strong></p>
3686 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
3687 Bridge memory controller:
</p>
3690 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
3693 <p>This represent these values:
</p>
3698 sv
00001028 (subvendor)
3699 sd
000001AD (subdevice)
3701 sc
00 (bus subclass)
3705 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
3706 -n' as
8086:
2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
3707 0600. The
0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
3708 0300 (VGA compatible card) and
0200 (Ethernet controller).
</p>
3710 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
3713 <p><strong>USB subtype
</strong></p>
3715 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
3716 USB hub in a laptop:
</p>
3719 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
3722 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:
</p>
3725 v
1D6B (device vendor)
3726 p
0001 (device product)
3728 dc
09 (device class)
3729 dsc
00 (device subclass)
3730 dp
00 (device protocol)
3731 ic
09 (interface class)
3732 isc
00 (interface subclass)
3733 ip
00 (interface protocol)
3736 <p>The
0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
3737 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
3738 these alias entries show up:
</p>
3741 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
3742 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
3743 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
3744 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
3747 <p>Interface class
0E01 is video control,
0E02 is video streaming (aka
3748 camera),
0101 is audio control device and
0102 is audio streaming (aka
3749 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.
</p>
3751 <p><strong>ACPI subtype
</strong></p>
3753 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
3754 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:
</p>
3757 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
3760 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.
</p>
3762 <p><strong>DMI subtype
</strong></p>
3764 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
3765 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
3766 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:
</p>
3769 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(
1.66):bd06/
15/
2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
3772 <p>The values present are
</p>
3775 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
3776 bvr
1UETB
6WW(
1.66) (BIOS version)
3777 bd
06/
15/
2005 (BIOS date)
3778 svn IBM (system vendor)
3779 pn
2371H4G (product name)
3780 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
3781 rvn IBM (board vendor)
3782 rn
2371H4G (board name)
3783 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
3784 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
3785 ct
10 (chassis type)
3786 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
3789 <p>The chassis type
10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
3790 found in the dmidecode source:
</p>
3794 4 Low Profile Desktop
3807 17 Main Server Chassis
3808 18 Expansion Chassis
3810 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
3811 21 Peripheral Chassis
3813 23 Rack Mount Chassis
3822 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
3823 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
3824 claim it is a desktop.
</p>
3826 <p><strong>SerIO subtype
</strong></p>
3828 <p>This type is used for PS/
2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
3832 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
3835 <p>The values present are
</p>
3844 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
3845 the valid values are.
</p>
3847 <p><strong>Other subtypes
</strong></p>
3849 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
3850 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
3851 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
3852 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
3853 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
3854 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
3855 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.
</p>
3857 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values
</strong></p>
3859 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
3860 one can use the following shell script:
</p>
3863 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u); do \
3865 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/ /' ; \
3869 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
3870 list is very long on my test machine):
</p>
3874 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
3876 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
3878 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
3879 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
3880 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
3881 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
3882 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
3883 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
3884 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
3885 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
3889 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
3890 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
3891 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
3892 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
3894 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
15:
</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
3895 "find ... -print0 | xargs -
0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
3896 in /sys/ with space in them.
</p>
3902 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>.
3907 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3911 <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>
3917 <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
3918 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
3919 Launcher and updated the Debian package
3920 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile
</a> to make
3921 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
3922 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
3923 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
3924 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
3925 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
3926 contribute.
<a href=
"http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream
</a>
3927 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
3928 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
3929 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
3930 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
3931 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
3932 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
3933 view
</a> or use "
<tt>git clone
3934 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git
</tt>".</p>
3940 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram
">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot
">robot</a>.
3945 <div class="padding
"></div>
3949 <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>
3955 <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
3956 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
3957 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
3958 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
3959 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
3960 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
3961 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
3962 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
3963 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
3964 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
3965 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
3967 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
3968 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/
2010/
05/msg01206.html
">use
3969 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>. The idea is fairly
3974 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
3975 starting when a user log in.</li>
3977 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
3978 hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
3980 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
3981 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
3984 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
3985 package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
3989 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
3990 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
3991 discover database to find packages and
3992 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/
">PackageKit</a> to install
3995 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
3996 draft package is now checked into
3997 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/
">the
3998 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>. In the process, I updated the
3999 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html
">discover-data</a>
4000 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
4001 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
4002 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
4003 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html
">discover</a>
4004 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
4005 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
4006 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
4007 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
4008 because of the freeze).</p>
4010 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
4011 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
4014 <p align="center
"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
01-
09-hw-autoinstall.png
"></p>
4016 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
4017 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
4018 program(s)" button should to be implemented.
</p>
4020 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
4021 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
4022 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
4023 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
4024 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
4025 reportbug if it isn't. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
4026 such mapping, please let me know.
</p>
4028 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
4029 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
4030 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
4031 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
4032 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
4033 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
4034 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
4035 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
4036 not be installed?
</p>
4038 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
4039 please send me an email. :)
</p>
4045 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>.
4050 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4054 <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>
4060 <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
4061 <a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
4062 NXT
</a>. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
4063 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
4064 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
4065 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
4066 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego
</a> (server
4067 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
4068 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
4069 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)
</p>
4071 <p>Update
2012-
01-
03: A
4072 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page
</a>
4073 including links to Lego related packages is now available.
</p>
4079 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>.
4084 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4088 <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>
4094 <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
4095 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.
</p>
4097 <p><a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin
</a>, the digital
4098 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
4099 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
4100 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
4101 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> is about to improve a bit.
4102 The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
4103 package
</a> (version
0.7.2-
2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
4104 in
<a href=
"http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue
</A>
4105 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
4108 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
4109 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
4110 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:
</p>
4113 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
4115 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=
1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
4116 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
4119 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
4120 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
4121 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
4122 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
4123 around
5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
4124 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
4125 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
4126 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
4127 not be able to get all the features out of the client.
</p>
4129 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4130 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4131 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
4137 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>.
4142 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4146 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian
</a>
4152 <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
4153 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>, the decentralised
4154 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
4155 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
4156 state of
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
4157 Debian
</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
4158 is now maintained by a
4159 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
4160 people
</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
4161 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
4162 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
4163 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
4164 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
4165 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
4166 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
4167 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
4169 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
4170 Ubuntu
</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
4173 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
4174 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
4175 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
4176 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
4177 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
4178 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
4179 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
4180 patch to backport
</a> the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
4181 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
4182 new version to unstable.
4184 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
4185 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
4186 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
4187 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
4188 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
4189 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
4190 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
4191 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
4192 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
4193 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
4194 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
4195 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
4196 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
4197 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
4198 have not tested them.
</p>
4201 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
4202 with bitcoins
</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
4203 I received
20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
4204 years ago, as can be
4205 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
4206 on the blockexplorer service
</a>. Thank you everyone for your
4207 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
4208 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
4209 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
4210 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
4211 the same address as last time,
4212 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
4218 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>.
4223 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4227 <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>
4234 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
4235 this summer
</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
4236 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
4237 <a href=
"https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
4238 repository for the project
</a>.
</p>
4240 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
4241 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
4242 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
4243 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.
</p>
4245 <p>Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
4246 PostScript formats at
4247 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
4248 Science Songbook
</a>.
</p>
4254 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>.
4259 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4263 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med
19-årsdagen, Debian!
</a>
4270 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet
19
4271 år
</a>. Jeg har fulgt det de siste
12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
4272 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!
</p>
4278 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>.
4283 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4287 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists
</a>
4293 <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
4294 <a href=
"http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø
</a>, I started
4295 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
4296 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
4297 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
4298 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
4299 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
4300 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
4301 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
4302 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
4303 missing in my book.
</p>
4305 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
4306 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
4307 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
4308 Especially now that
<a href=
"http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
4309 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
4310 out
<a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
4311 Computer Science Songbook
</a>.
4317 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>.
4322 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4326 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge
</a>
4332 <p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
4333 around
1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
4334 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
4335 up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
4336 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
4337 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
4338 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
4339 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
4340 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
4341 the tools to do so.
</p>
4343 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
4344 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
4345 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
4346 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.
</P>
4348 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
4349 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file
</a>
4350 with firmware information for all
11th generation servers, listing
4351 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
4352 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
4353 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
4354 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
4355 be activated on the first reboot.
</p>
4357 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
4358 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
4359 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.
</p>
4365 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
4367 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
4369 'XML::Simple' =
> 'perl-XML-Simple',
4371 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
4372 eval "use $module;";
4374 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
4375 system("yum install -y $pkg");
4376 eval "use $module;";
4380 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
4386 sub run_firmware_script {
4387 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
4389 print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
4392 print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
4394 if (
0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
4395 print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
4397 print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
4401 sub run_firmware_scripts {
4402 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
4403 # Run firmware packages
4404 for my $dir (@dirs) {
4405 print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
4406 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
4407 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
4408 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
4409 run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
4417 print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
4418 system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
4423 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4426 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
4428 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
4429 system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-
33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
4431 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
4435 fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
4436 system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
4437 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
4438 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
4441 for my $url (@paths) {
4442 fetch_dell_fw($url);
4444 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
4446 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
4447 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
4451 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
4452 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
4458 my $url =
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
4462 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
4463 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
4464 # machines and
11th generation Dell servers.
4465 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
4466 my $filename = shift;
4468 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
4470 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
4472 print STDERR
"Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
4474 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
4476 for my $bundle (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareBundle}}) {
4477 my $brand = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
4478 my $model = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Model}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
4480 if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}) {
4481 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}[
0]-
>{osCode};
4483 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}-
>{osCode};
4485 if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
4487 @paths = map { $_-
>{path} } @{$bundle-
>{Contents}-
>{Package}};
4490 for my $component (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareComponent}}) {
4491 my $componenttype = $component-
>{ComponentType}-
>{value};
4493 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
4494 next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
4496 my $cpath = $component-
>{path};
4497 for my $path (@paths) {
4498 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
4499 push(@paths, $cpath);
4507 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
4508 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
4509 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
4510 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
4517 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>.
4522 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4526 <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>
4532 <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
4533 <a href=
"http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
4534 comments and opinions
</a> on my blog post on
4535 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
4536 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian
</a> and my blog post about
4537 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
4538 default KDE desktop in Debian
</a>. I only have time to address one
4539 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
4540 misunderstanding he bring forward:
</p>
4543 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
4544 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
4545 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
4548 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
4549 and booting into runlevel
1 is the same. I am not surprised he
4550 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
4551 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
4552 runlevel
1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
4553 mode. I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
4554 hard to explain.
</p>
4556 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
4557 "
<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin
</tt>". This means the only thing that is
4558 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
4559 state "between
" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
4560 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
4561 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
4562 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
4563 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
4564 runs "init -t1 S
" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
4565 1. It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
4566 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
4569 <p>This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
4570 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
4571 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". When booting into
4572 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
4573 S; /etc/init.d/rc
1; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". A problem show up when
4574 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
4575 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
4576 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
4577 after visiting single user mode.</p>
4579 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
4580 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
4581 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
4582 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
4583 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
4584 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
4585 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
4586 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
4588 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
4589 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
4590 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
4596 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>.
4601 <div class="padding
"></div>
4605 <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>
4611 <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
4612 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
4613 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
4614 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
4615 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
4616 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
4617 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
4618 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
4619 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
4620 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
4621 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
4622 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
4623 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
4625 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
4626 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
4627 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
4628 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
4629 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
4630 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
4631 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
4632 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
4633 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
4635 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
4636 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
4637 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
4640 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
4641 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
4642 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
4643 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
4644 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
4645 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
4646 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
4647 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
4648 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
4649 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
4650 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
4651 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
4652 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
4653 find time to push this forward.</p>
4659 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>.
4664 <div class="padding
"></div>
4668 <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>
4674 <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
4675 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
4676 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
4677 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
4680 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
4681 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
4682 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
4686 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
4687 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
4688 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
4689 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
4690 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
4691 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
4692 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
4695 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
4696 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
4697 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
4698 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
4699 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
4700 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
4701 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
4702 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
4703 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
4704 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
4705 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
4706 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
4707 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
4709 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
4710 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
4711 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
4712 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
4713 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
4714 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
4715 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
4716 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
4717 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
4718 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
4720 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
4721 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
4722 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
4723 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
4724 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
4725 latter behaviour.</li>
4729 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
4730 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
4731 it do not matter much.</p>
4733 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
4734 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
4735 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
4741 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>.
4746 <div class="padding
"></div>
4750 <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>
4756 <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</A>
4757 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
4758 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
4759 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
4760 security support for a few years.</p>
4762 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
4763 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
4764 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
4765 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com
">FixMyStreet</a> clone
4766 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
4767 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
4768 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
4769 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
4770 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
4771 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
4772 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
4773 easier in the future.</p>
4775 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
4776 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
4777 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package. But this leave me
4778 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
4779 do not have time for.</p>
4785 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>.
4790 <div class="padding
"></div>
4794 <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>
4800 <p>Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
4801 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
4802 update in English.</p>
4804 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
4805 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
4806 of the British service
4807 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
4808 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
4809 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
4810 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
4811 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
4812 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
4813 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
4814 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
4815 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
4816 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> is using
4817 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/
">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
4818 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
4819 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
4821 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
4822 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
4823 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
4824 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
4825 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
4826 public infrastructure.</p>
4828 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
4835 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>.
4840 <div class="padding
"></div>
4844 <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>
4850 <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
4851 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
4852 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
4853 available on the Internet, and check our locally
4854 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
4855 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
4856 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
4857 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
4858 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
4859 out which security holes were present in our free software
4862 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
4863 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
4864 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
4865 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
4866 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
4867 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
4868 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
4869 solution. Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html
">Common
4870 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
4871 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
4872 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/
">National
4873 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
4874 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
4875 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
4876 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
4877 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
4879 <p>To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
4880 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
4881 check out, one could look up
4882 <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
4883 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
4884 The most recent one is
4885 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-
2010-
0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
4886 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
4887 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
4889 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
4890 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I've written a
4891 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
4892 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
4893 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
4894 security issues out.</p>
4896 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
4897 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
4898 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
4900 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt
">a
4901 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
4902 information. I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
4904 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
4905 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
4906 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
4907 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
4908 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
4909 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
4910 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
4911 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
4912 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
4913 established soon.</p>
4915 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
4916 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
4917 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
4918 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
4919 for their packages.</p>
4925 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>.
4930 <div class="padding
"></div>
4934 <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>
4941 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data
">discover-data</a>
4942 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
4943 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
4944 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
4945 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
4946 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
4947 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
4948 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
4949 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>. The relevant output on
4950 one of my machines like this:</p>
4954 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
4957 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
4966 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
4967 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
4970 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
4971 echo loaded pci modules:
4973 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
4974 for address in * ; do
4975 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
4976 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
4977 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
4978 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
4979 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
3}'`
4989 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
4993 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
4994 echo loaded usb modules:
4996 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
4997 for address in * ; do
4998 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
4999 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
5000 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
5001 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
5002 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
6}')
5014 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
5021 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>.
5026 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5030 <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>
5036 <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the
<a
5037 href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> testing if the new
5038 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
5039 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
5040 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
5041 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
5042 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
5043 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
5046 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
5047 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
5048 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
5049 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
5050 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
5051 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
5052 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
5053 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.
</p>
5055 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
5056 I perform on a new model.
</p>
5060 <li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
5061 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
5062 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.
</li>
5064 <li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
5065 installation, X.org is working.
</li>
5067 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
5068 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
5069 reported by the program.
</li>
5071 <li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
5072 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
5073 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
5074 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
5075 normally test this by playing
5076 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
5077 video
</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.
</li>
5079 <li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
5080 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
5082 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
5083 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
5085 <li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
5086 picture from the v4l device show up.
</li>
5088 <li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
5089 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
5092 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
5093 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
5096 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
5097 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
5100 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
5101 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
5102 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
5103 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
5106 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
5107 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
5108 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
5113 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
5114 for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
5115 the test results later. For now I can report that HP
8100 Elite work
5116 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook
8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
5117 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with
8440p. As you
5118 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
5119 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
5120 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.
</p>
5126 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>.
5131 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5135 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins
</a>
5141 <p>As I continue to explore
5142 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>, I've starting to wonder
5143 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
5144 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.
</p>
5146 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
5147 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
5148 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
5149 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
5150 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
5151 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
5152 all transactions. There I can see that my address
5153 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a>
5154 have received
16.06 Bitcoin, the
5155 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv
8MHqvwst
3</a>
5156 address of Simon Phipps have received
181.97 BitCoin and the address
5157 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt
</A>
5158 of EFF have received
2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
5159 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
5160 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
5161 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
5162 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
5163 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
5164 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
5165 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.
</p>
5167 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
5168 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
5169 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
5170 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
5171 If the Skolelinux foundation
5172 (
<a href=
"http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
5173 Debian Labs
</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
5174 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
5175 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
5176 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
5177 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
5178 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
5179 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.
</p>
5181 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
5182 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
5183 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
5184 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
5185 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
5186 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
5187 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
5188 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
5189 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
5190 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
5191 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
5192 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
5193 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
5194 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
5197 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
5198 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
5199 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
5200 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get
50
5201 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
5202 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
5203 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
5204 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the
50
5206 <a href=
"http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool
</a>
5207 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
5208 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
5209 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
5212 <p>Update
2010-
12-
15: Found an
<a
5213 href=
"http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
5214 criticism
</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
5215 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
5216 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.
</p>
5222 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>.
5227 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5231 <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>
5237 <p>With this weeks lawless
5238 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
5239 attacks
</a> on Wikileak and
5240 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
5241 speech
</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
5242 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
5244 <a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
5245 Phipps on bitcoin
</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
5246 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
5247 involved with
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>. I got
5248 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
5249 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
5250 for helping me remember BitCoin.
</p>
5252 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
5253 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
5254 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
5255 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
5256 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
5257 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets
2.9
5258 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
5259 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
5260 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
5261 Debian
</a> soon.
</p>
5263 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
5264 There are
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
5265 bitcoins
</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
5266 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
5267 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
5268 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
5270 <a href=
"https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free
</a> (
0.05
5271 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
5272 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch
</a> to keep an eye
5273 on the current exchange rates.
</p>
5275 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
5276 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
5277 donations to the address
5278 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</b>. Thank you!
</p>
5284 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>.
5289 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5293 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?
</a>
5299 <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
5300 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
5301 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
5302 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
5303 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
5304 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
5305 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
5306 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.
<p>
5308 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
5309 mplayer in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
5310 Edu/Skolelinux
</a>. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
5311 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
5312 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
5313 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
5314 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
5315 tested the browser plugins
</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
5316 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
5317 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
5318 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.
</P>
5320 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
5321 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
5322 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
5323 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
5324 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
5325 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
5326 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
5327 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
5328 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
5329 what is going on.
</p>
5335 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>.
5340 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5344 <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>
5350 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
5351 upgrade testing of the
5352 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
5353 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a> to do
<tt>apt-get autoremove
</tt> when using apt-get.
5354 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
5355 can now present the updated result from today:
</p>
5357 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
5359 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
5366 browser-plugin-gnash
5373 freedesktop-sound-theme
5375 gconf-defaults-service
5390 gnome-desktop-environment
5394 gnome-session-canberra
5399 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
5405 libapache2-mod-dnssd
5408 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
5411 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
5412 libboost-python1.42
.0
5413 libboost-thread1.42
.0
5415 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0
5417 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
5424 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
5439 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
5444 libgtksourceview2.0-common
5445 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
5446 libmono-addins0.2-cil
5447 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
5448 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
5449 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
5450 libmono-posix2.0-cil
5451 libmono-security2.0-cil
5452 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
5453 libmono-system2.0-cil
5456 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
5457 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
5467 libtelepathy-farsight0
5476 nautilus-sendto-empathy
5480 python-aptdaemon-gtk
5482 python-beautifulsoup
5497 python-gtksourceview2
5508 python-pkg-resources
5515 python-twisted-conch
5521 python-zope.interface
5526 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
5533 system-config-printer-udev
5535 telepathy-mission-control-
5
5548 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
5556 fast-user-switch-applet
5575 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
5577 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
5583 system-config-printer
5590 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
5593 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
5596 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
5602 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
5604 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
5610 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
5617 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
5633 kdeartwork-emoticons
5635 kdeartwork-theme-icon
5639 kdebase-workspace-bin
5640 kdebase-workspace-data
5654 kscreensaver-xsavers
5669 plasma-dataengines-workspace
5671 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
5672 plasma-runners-addons
5673 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
5674 plasma-scriptengine-python
5675 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
5676 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
5677 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
5678 plasma-scriptengines
5679 plasma-wallpapers-addons
5680 plasma-widget-folderview
5681 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
5685 xscreensaver-data-extra
5687 xscreensaver-gl-extra
5688 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
5691 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
5695 google-gadgets-common
5713 libggadget-qt-
1.0-
0b
5718 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
5727 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
5729 libplasmagenericshell4
5743 libsmokeknewstuff2-
3
5744 libsmokeknewstuff3-
3
5746 libsmokektexteditor3
5754 libsmokeqtnetwork4-
3
5760 libsmokeqtuitools4-
3
5772 plasma-dataengines-addons
5773 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
5774 plasma-widget-lancelot
5775 plasma-widgets-addons
5776 plasma-widgets-workspace
5780 update-notifier-common
5783 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
5784 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
5785 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
5786 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.
</p>
5792 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>.
5797 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5801 <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>
5807 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
5808 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project
</a>
5809 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
5810 fairly old IBM eserver xseries
345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
5811 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge
2950 host machine. This was a
5812 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
5813 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
5814 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
5815 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.
</p>
5818 <a href=
"http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
5819 nice recipe
</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
5820 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
5821 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
5822 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
5823 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.
</p>
5829 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/
35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
5834 if [ -z "$
1" ] ; then
5835 echo "Usage: $
0 <hostname
>"
5841 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
5842 echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
5846 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
5847 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
5848 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
5849 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
5852 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=
1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
5853 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
5855 parted $img mklabel msdos
5856 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap
0 $disksize
5857 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
5858 parted $img set
1 boot on
5861 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
5862 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
5864 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=
1M
5865 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
5866 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
5868 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
5869 losetup -d /dev/loop0
5872 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
5873 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.
</p>
5875 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
5876 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-
686 and
5877 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
5878 seem to work just fine.
</p>
5884 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>.
5889 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5893 <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>
5899 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
5900 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
5901 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
5902 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran
20101118.
</p>
5904 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
5905 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
5906 can see if anything should be changed.
</p>
5908 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
5910 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
5913 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
5914 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-
4.3 cups-pk-helper
5915 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
5916 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
5917 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
5918 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
5919 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
5920 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
5921 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
5922 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
5923 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
5924 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
5925 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
5926 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
5927 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-
0 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
5928 libboost-python1.42
.0 libboost-thread1.42
.0 libchamplain-
0.4-
0
5929 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
5930 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-
1.0-
2
5931 libepc-common libepc-ui-
1.0-
2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
5932 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
5933 libgdl-
1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-
0 libgif4
5934 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
5935 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
5936 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
5937 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
5938 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
5939 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
5940 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
5941 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
5942 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-
6
5943 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6
.8
5944 libpolkit-gtk-
1-
0 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
5945 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6
.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
5946 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-
4
5947 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-
0.99-
0
5948 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
5949 mono-
2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
5950 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
5951 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-
4suite-xml
5952 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
5953 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
5954 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
5955 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
5956 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
5957 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
5958 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
5959 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
5960 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
5961 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
5962 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
5963 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
5964 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
5965 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
5966 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
5967 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
5968 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-
5 telepathy-salut tomboy
5969 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
5970 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
5974 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
5977 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
5978 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
5979 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
5980 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
5981 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
5982 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
5983 guile-
1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
5984 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7
5985 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
5986 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1
5987 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3 libfaad0 libgadu3
5988 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
5989 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
5990 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
5991 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-
1.0-
0
5992 libgtkhtml2-
0 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
5993 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
5994 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
5995 libmagick++
10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
5996 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
5997 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9
5998 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8
5999 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
6000 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libsvga1
6001 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
6002 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
6003 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
6004 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
6005 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
6008 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
6011 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6014 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
6020 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
6022 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
6025 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-
4.3 dcoprss
6026 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
6027 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
6028 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
6029 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
6030 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
6031 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
6032 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
6033 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
6034 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
6035 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
6036 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
6037 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
6038 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
6039 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42
.0
6040 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
6041 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
6042 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
6043 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
6044 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
6045 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
6046 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
6047 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
6048 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
6049 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
6050 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
6051 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
6052 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
6053 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
6057 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
6060 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
6061 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
6062 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
6063 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
6064 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
6065 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
6066 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
6067 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
6068 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
6069 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
6070 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
6071 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
6072 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
6073 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
6074 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
6075 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
6076 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-
0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2
6077 libboost-python1.34
.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
6078 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
6079 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-
0 libicu38
6080 libiec61883-
0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
6081 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
6082 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
6083 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
6084 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
6085 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
6086 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
6087 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-
8 librss1 libsensors3
6088 libsmbios2 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90
6089 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
6090 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
6091 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
6092 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
6095 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
6098 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
6099 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
6100 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
6101 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
6102 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
6103 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
6104 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
6107 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
6110 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
6117 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>.
6122 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6126 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd
</a>
6133 <a href=
"http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
6134 call from the Gnash project
</a> for
6135 <a href=
"http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot
</a> slaves to test the
6136 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
6137 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
6138 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
6139 releases out more often.
</p>
6141 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
6142 I have considered setting up a
<a
6143 href=
"http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd
</a>
6144 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
6145 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the
5
6146 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
6147 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
6148 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
6149 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
6150 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
6151 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
6152 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
6153 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
6154 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.
</p>
6160 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>.
6165 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6169 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in
3D
</a>
6175 <p><img src=
"http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
6177 <p>3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
6179 <a href=
"http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
6180 thingiverse blog
</a>.
</p>
6186 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>.
6191 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6195 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates
2010-
10-
24</a>
6201 <p>Some updates.
</p>
6203 <p>My
<a href=
"http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge
</a> to
6204 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of
10
6205 signers was reached in
24 hours, and so far
13 people have signed it.
6206 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
6207 how far we can get before the time limit of December
24 is reached.
6210 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
6211 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
6212 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
6214 <a href=
"http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov
</a>,
6215 and can be used using
<tt>kcov
<directory
> <binary
></tt>.
6216 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
6217 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
6218 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
6219 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.
</p>
6221 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for
<a
6222 href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
6223 new alpha release of Debian Edu
</a>, and just published the second
6224 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
6225 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>
6226 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
6227 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
6228 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
6229 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
6230 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.
</p>
6236 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>.
6241 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6245 <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>
6251 <p>In the
<a href=
"http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
6252 popularity-contest numbers
</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
6253 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
6254 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
6255 working flash is important for Debian users. Around
10 percent of the
6256 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
6259 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August
2008
6260 («
<a href=
"http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
6261 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
6262 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs
</a>»), one of the most important problems
6263 schools experienced with
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6264 Edu/Skolelinux
</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
6265 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
6266 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
6267 good reason to stay with Windows.
</p>
6269 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
6270 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
6271 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
6272 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
6273 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
6274 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
6275 example Internet Explorer
6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
6276 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
6277 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
6278 pages they want to visit.
</p>
6280 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
6281 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
6282 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
6283 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
6284 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
6285 the new release
0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
6286 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version
0.8.7.
6287 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
6288 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
6289 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
6290 accept the new package into Squeeze.
</p>
6296 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>.
6301 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6305 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery
</a>
6311 <p>I discovered this while doing
6312 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
6313 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze
</a>. A few packages
6314 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
6315 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
6316 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.
</p>
6318 <p>An example is from todays
6319 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
6320 of KDE using aptitude
</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
6321 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
6322 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
6323 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
6324 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
6325 because its dependencies are unavailable.
</p>
6327 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:
</p>
6330 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
6331 perl-modules depends on perl (
>=
5.10.1-
1); however:
6332 Version of perl on system is
5.10.0-
19lenny
2.
6333 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
6334 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
6337 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
6338 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug
</a>, and will
6339 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
6340 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
6341 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
6342 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
6343 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
6344 of dependency loops.
</p>
6347 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
6348 tireless effort by Bill Allombert
</a>, the number of circular
6350 <a href=
"http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
6351 is dropping
</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)
</p>
6353 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
6354 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier
</a> and
6355 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour
</a> between
6356 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
6357 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
6364 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>.
6369 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6373 <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>
6380 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup
</a>
6382 <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
6384 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
6385 all
</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.
</p>
6387 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
6388 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
6389 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
6390 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.
</p>
6392 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
6393 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
6394 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
6396 <p><strong>powerdns
</strong></p>
6398 <a href=
"http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
6399 on how to
</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
6402 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
6403 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
6404 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
6405 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
6406 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
6407 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
</p>
6409 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
6410 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
6411 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
6412 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
6413 "dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
6414 "(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry. For
6415 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
6416 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
6417 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
6418 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
6419 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
6420 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
6421 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
6422 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
6423 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
6424 ldapsearch commands could look like this:
</p>
6427 ldapsearch -h ldap \
6428 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
6429 -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
6430 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
6431 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
6432 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
6433 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
6435 ldapsearch -h ldap \
6436 -b dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
6437 -s base -x '(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
6438 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
6439 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
6440 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
6443 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
6444 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
6445 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
6446 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6450 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6452 objectclass: dnsdomain
6453 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6456 associateddomain: tjener.intern
6458 dn: dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6460 objectclass: dnsdomain2
6461 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6463 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
6464 associateddomain:
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
6467 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
6468 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
6469 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
6470 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
6471 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
6472 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
6473 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
6474 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=
10.0.2.2)"
6475 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
6476 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
6477 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
6480 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
6484 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
6485 '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
6486 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
6487 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
6488 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
6489 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
6491 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
6492 '(arecord=
10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
6495 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
6496 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
6497 reverse lookups.
</p>
6499 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
6500 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
6501 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
6502 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.
</p>
6504 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC
1274) and
6505 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
6506 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.
</p>
6508 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
6509 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
6510 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
6511 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
6512 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.
</p>
6514 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
6515 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
6516 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
6517 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
6518 (zonename and relativedomainname).
</p>
6520 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
6521 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
6522 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
6523 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
6524 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
6525 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):
</p>
6528 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
6531 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
6532 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
6533 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
6534 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
6535 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
6539 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
6540 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
6541 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
6542 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
6543 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
6544 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.
</p>
6546 <p><strong>ISC dhcp
</strong></p>
6548 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
6549 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
6550 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
6551 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
6552 what is needed without having to read the source code.
</p>
6554 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
6555 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
6556 stored. These are the relevant entries from
6557 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:
</p>
6560 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
6561 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
6564 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
6565 configuration it need. The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
6566 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))". The
6567 search result is this entry:
</p>
6570 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6573 objectClass: dhcpServer
6574 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6577 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
6578 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
6579 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
6580 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
6581 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
6582 The search result is this entry:
</p>
6585 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6588 objectClass: dhcpService
6589 objectClass: dhcpOptions
6590 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6591 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
6592 dhcpStatements: authoritative
6593 dhcpOption: smtp-server code
69 = array of ip-address
6594 dhcpOption: www-server code
72 = array of ip-address
6595 dhcpOption: wpad-url code
252 = text
6598 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
6599 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
6600 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
6601 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
6602 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
6603 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
6604 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
6605 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
6606 related computer objects.
</p>
6608 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
6609 of the client (
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00 in this example), using a subtree
6610 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
6611 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
6612 00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00))" as the filter. This is what a host object look
6616 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6619 objectClass: dhcpHost
6620 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
6621 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
6624 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
6625 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
6626 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
6627 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
6628 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
6629 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
6630 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
6631 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
6632 structural object class.
6634 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
6636 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
6637 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
6638 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
6639 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
6640 in the configuration.
</p>
6642 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
6643 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
6644 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
6645 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
6646 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
6649 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
6650 this might work for Debian Edu:
</p>
6654 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
6655 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
6656 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
6657 cn=
10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
6658 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
6659 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
6660 cn=
192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
6661 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
6662 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
6663 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
6666 <P>This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
6667 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
6668 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
6669 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.
</p>
6671 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
6675 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6678 objectClass: dhcpHost
6679 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6680 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
6681 associateddomain: hostname.intern
6682 arecord:
10.11.12.13
6683 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
6684 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
6687 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
6688 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
6689 auxiliary object class.
</p>
6695 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>.
6700 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6704 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects
</a>
6710 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
6711 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
6712 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
6713 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
6714 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.
</p>
6716 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
6717 information finally found a solution that seem to work.
</p>
6719 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
6720 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
6721 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
6722 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
6723 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
6724 to a slave DNS server.
</p>
6726 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
6727 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
6728 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
6729 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
6730 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
6733 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
6734 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
6735 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
6739 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
6741 objectClass: dhcphost
6742 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
6743 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
6744 associateddomain: hostname.intern
6745 arecord:
10.11.12.13
6746 dhcphwaddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
6747 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
6751 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
6752 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
6753 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
6754 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.
</p>
6756 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
6757 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
6758 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
6759 that. If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
6760 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
6761 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
6762 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
6763 might be a good place to put it.
</p>
6765 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
6766 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
6772 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>.
6777 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6781 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP
</a>
6787 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
6788 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
6789 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
6790 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.
</p>
6792 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
6793 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
6794 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
6795 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
6798 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
6799 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
6800 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.
</p>
6802 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
6803 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
6804 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?
</p>
6807 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
6809 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
6811 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
6812 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
6813 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
6815 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
6816 # existence of attribute names.
6818 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
6819 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
6820 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
6822 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
6823 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
6825 # objectclass (
1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
6828 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
6830 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
6831 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
6832 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
6833 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $
5}'|sort -u) ; do
6834 filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
6835 ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
6836 grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
6837 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
6838 attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
6839 # bass value on to clients
6840 eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
6846 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
6847 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
6848 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
6849 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
6850 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)
</p>
6852 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
6853 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
6855 <p>Update
2010-
07-
17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
6856 configuration in LDAP that was created around year
2000 by
6857 <a href=
"http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
6858 Xperience, Inc.,
2000</a>. I found its
6859 <a href=
"http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files
</a> on a
6860 personal home page over at redhat.com.
</p>
6866 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>.
6871 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6875 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
6882 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
6883 last post
</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
6884 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
6885 <a href=
"http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer
</a> is claimed to be capable of
6886 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
6887 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
6888 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
6889 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
6890 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
6891 Debian
</a> testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
6892 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
6893 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
6894 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.
</p>
6900 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>.
6905 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6909 <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>
6915 <p>Here is a short update on my
<a
6916 href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
6917 Debian Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrade testing
</a>. Here is a summary of the
6918 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I'm
6919 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
6920 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
6921 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#
584861</a> and
6922 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#
585716</a>).
</p>
6924 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
6925 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
6926 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
6927 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
6928 publish the difference.
</p>
6930 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
6933 at-spi cpp-
4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6934 libatspi1.0-
0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-
1-common
6935 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
6936 libgtksourceview-common libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
6937 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
6938 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
6939 python-
4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
6940 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
6943 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
6946 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
6947 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
6948 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-
50
6949 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
6950 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9
6951 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3
6952 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
6953 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
6954 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
6955 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-
0
6956 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
6957 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++
10
6958 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
6959 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5
6960 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
6961 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
6962 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1
6963 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
6964 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
6965 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
6968 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
6971 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
6972 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
6973 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
6974 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
6975 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
6976 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
6977 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
6978 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
6979 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
6980 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
6981 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
6982 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
6983 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
6984 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
6985 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
6986 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
6987 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
6988 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
6989 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
6990 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
6991 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
6994 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
6997 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
6998 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
6999 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
7002 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
7003 <a href=
"http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
7004 in git
</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
7005 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
7006 the difference somewhat.
7012 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>.
7017 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7021 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
7027 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
7028 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
7029 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
7030 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
7031 <a href=
"http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA
</a>, which has proved to
7032 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
7033 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
7034 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
7035 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
7036 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)
</p>
7038 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
7039 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
7040 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
7041 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
7044 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
7045 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
7046 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
7047 <a href=
"http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi
</a> for that.
</p>
7049 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
7050 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
7052 <p>Update
2010-
06-
29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
7053 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq
</a> package as a
7054 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
7055 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
7056 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.
</p>
7062 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>.
7067 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7071 <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>
7078 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
7079 about the fact
</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
7080 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
7081 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.
</p>
7083 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
7084 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
7085 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
7086 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.
</p>
7088 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
7089 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
7090 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
7093 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
7095 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
7096 schema
</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
7097 available today from IETF.
</p>
7100 --- dhcp.schema (revision
65192)
7101 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
7103 objectclass (
2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
7105 DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
7109 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
7110 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
7113 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
7114 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
7115 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.
</p>
7117 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
7118 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
7124 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>.
7129 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7133 <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>
7139 <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
7140 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
7141 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
7142 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
7143 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
7147 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
7148 tasksel --new-install
7151 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
7152 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
7153 any output what so ever.
7155 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
7156 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
7157 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
7158 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
7159 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
7160 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
7164 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
7165 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
7169 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "
<tt>aptitude -q
7170 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
7171 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
7172 ~pimportant
</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
7173 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
7174 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
7177 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
7178 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
7185 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>.
7190 <div class="padding
"></div>
7194 <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>
7201 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">testing
7202 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
7203 finally made the upgrade logs available from
7204 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/
">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
7205 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
7206 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
7207 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
7209 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
7210 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
7211 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
7212 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
7213 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
7214 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
7215 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
7216 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
7218 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
7219 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
7220 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
7223 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
7224 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
7225 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
7226 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
7227 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
7228 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
7229 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
7232 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
7233 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
7234 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
7235 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
7236 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
7237 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
7238 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
7239 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
7240 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
7241 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
7242 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
7243 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
7244 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
7245 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
7246 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
7247 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7248 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
7249 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
7250 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
7251 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
7252 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
7253 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
7254 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
7255 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
7256 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
7257 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
7258 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
7259 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
7260 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
7261 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
7263 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
7265 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
7266 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
7267 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
7268 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
7269 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
7270 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
7271 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
7272 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
7273 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
7274 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
7275 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7276 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
7277 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
7278 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
7279 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
7280 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
7281 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
7282 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
7283 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
7284 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
7285 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
7286 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
7287 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
7288 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
7289 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
7290 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
7291 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
7292 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
7293 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
7294 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7295 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
7298 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
7300 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
7301 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
7302 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
7303 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
7304 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
7305 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
7306 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
7307 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
7308 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
7309 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
7310 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
7311 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
7312 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
7313 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
7314 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7315 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
7316 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
7317 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
7318 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
7319 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
7320 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
7321 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
7322 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
7323 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
7324 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
7325 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
7326 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
7327 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
7329 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
7330 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
7331 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
7332 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
7333 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
7334 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
7335 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
7336 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
7337 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
7338 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
7339 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
7340 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
7341 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
7342 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
7343 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
7344 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
7345 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
7346 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
7347 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
7348 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
7349 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
7350 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
7351 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
7352 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
7353 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
7354 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
7355 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
7356 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
7357 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
7358 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
7359 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
7360 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
7361 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
7362 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
7363 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
7364 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
7365 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
7373 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>.
7378 <div class="padding
"></div>
7382 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
7388 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
7389 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
7390 have been discovered and reported in the process
7391 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
7392 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
7393 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584861">#584861</a> in
7394 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
7395 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
7397 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
7398 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
7399 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
7400 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
7401 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
7402 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
7404 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
7405 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
7406 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
7407 is created. The bug report
7408 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
7409 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
7410 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
7411 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
7412 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
7413 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-
26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-
804130/
">known
7414 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
7415 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
7416 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
7417 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
7418 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
7419 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
7422 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
7423 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
7441 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
7442 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
7444 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
7445 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
7446 cat
> $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
<<EOF
7450 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
7454 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
7455 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
7456 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
7458 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
7460 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
7461 # to return the correct answers.
7462 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
7463 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
7465 # Include the desktop and laptop task
7466 for test in desktop laptop ; do
7467 echo
> $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
<<EOF
7471 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
7474 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
7475 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
7476 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
7477 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
7479 echo deb $mirror $to main
> $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
7480 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
7481 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
7482 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
7486 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
7487 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
7488 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
7489 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
7490 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
7491 kdebase-workspace-data
</p>
7493 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
7494 (KDE
167 KiB, Gnome
516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
7495 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
7496 aptitude report
760 packages upgraded,
448 newly installed,
129 to
7497 remove and
1 not upgraded and
1024MB need to be downloaded while for
7498 KDE the same numbers are
702 packages upgraded,
507 newly installed,
7499 193 to remove and
0 not upgraded and
1117MB need to be downloaded
</p>
7501 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
7502 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
7503 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
7504 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
7505 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
7512 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>.
7517 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7521 <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>
7527 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
7528 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
7529 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
7530 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
7531 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
7532 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
7533 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.
</p>
7535 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
7536 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
7545 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
7547 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
7550 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
7554 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-
2.88
7561 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
7562 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
7563 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.
</p>
7565 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
7566 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
7573 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>.
7578 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7582 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...
</a>
7589 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
7590 of Rob Weir
</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
7591 <a href=
"http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
7592 Standards Wars
</a> (PDF
25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
7593 following the standards wars of today.
</p>
7599 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>.
7604 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7608 <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>
7614 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
7615 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
7616 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
7617 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
7618 the Skolelinux build servers:
</p>
7621 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
7623 Dell Computer Corporation
1
7626 eserver xSeries
345 -[
8670M1X]-
1
7632 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
7633 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
7634 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
7635 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
7636 option to list the individual machines.
</p>
7639 <a href=
"http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
7640 city of Narvik
</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
7641 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
7642 are ~
1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
7643 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
7644 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
7651 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>.
7656 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7660 <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>
7666 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
7667 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
7668 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
7669 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
7672 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
7673 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#
583312</a> initially filed
7674 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
7675 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
7676 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#
524751</a> initially filed against
7677 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.
</p>
7679 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
7680 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
7681 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
7682 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
7683 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
7684 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
7685 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
7686 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.
</p>
7688 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.
</p>
7694 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>.
7699 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7703 <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>
7709 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
7710 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
7711 issues are known and should be solved:
7715 <li>The wicd package seen to
7716 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting
</a> and
7717 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup
</a> when
7718 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
7719 seem to be on the case.
</li>
7721 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
7722 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition
</a>
7723 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
7724 maintainer is on the case.
</li>
7726 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
7727 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
7728 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back
</a> to
7729 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
7730 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
7731 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
7732 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
7733 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.
</li>
7737 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
7738 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
7739 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
7740 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.
</p>
7742 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
7743 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
7744 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
7745 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
7747 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.
</p>
7753 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>.
7758 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7762 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer
</a>
7768 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
7769 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
7770 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
7771 definitely helped freeing some time.
</p>
7773 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
7774 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
7775 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
7776 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
7777 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
7778 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
7779 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
7780 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
7781 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
7782 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
7783 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
7784 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
7785 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
7788 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
7789 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
7790 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
7791 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
7792 "external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
7793 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
7794 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
7795 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
7796 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
7797 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
7800 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
7801 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
7802 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
7803 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
7804 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
7805 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.
</p>
7807 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
7808 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.
</p>
7814 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>.
7819 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7823 <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>
7829 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
7830 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
7831 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
7832 expected, if I am to believe the
7833 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
7834 on debian-devel@
</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
7835 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
7836 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
7837 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
7838 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
7841 More information about
7842 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
7843 based boot sequencing
</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
7844 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
7845 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
7851 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
7852 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
7853 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
7854 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
7860 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>.
7865 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7869 <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>
7875 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
7876 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
7877 system
</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
7878 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
7879 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
7880 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
7881 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
7882 to update the DHCP configuration.
</p>
7884 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
7885 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
7886 this on the collector host:
</p>
7889 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
7892 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
7893 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.
</p>
7895 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
7896 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
7897 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
7898 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
7905 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>.
7910 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7914 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart
</a>
7920 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
7921 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd
</a>
7923 <a href=
"http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced
</a>
7925 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
7926 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
7927 <a href=
"http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart
</a>, and might prove to be
7928 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
7929 based boot system. Tollef is
7930 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process
</a> of getting
7931 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
7932 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
7933 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
7934 at the moment do not.
</p>
7936 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
7937 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
7938 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
7939 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
7940 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
7943 <p>In the mean time, based on the
7944 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
7945 on debian-devel@
</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
7946 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
7947 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
7948 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
7949 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
7950 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
7951 with parallel booting enabled by default.
</p>
7957 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>.
7962 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7966 <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>
7972 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
7973 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
7974 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
7975 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
7976 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
7977 based boot sequencing
</a> is enabled, and add this line to
7978 /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
7981 CONCURRENCY=makefile
7984 <p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
7985 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
7986 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
7987 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
7988 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
7989 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
7990 make this happen.
</p>
7992 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
7993 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
7994 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
7995 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
7996 the package maintainers to fix it. :)
</p>
7998 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
7999 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
8000 expect we will get there in Squeeze+
1, if we get manage to test and
8001 fix the remaining issues.
</p>
8003 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
8004 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
8005 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
8006 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
8012 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>.
8017 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8021 <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>
8027 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version
2.87dsf-
2,
8028 and the upload of insserv version
1.12.0-
10 yesterday, Debian unstable
8029 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
8030 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
8031 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
8032 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
8033 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.
</p>
8035 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
8036 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
8037 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.
</p>
8043 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>.
8048 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8052 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development
</a>
8058 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
8059 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
8060 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
8061 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
8062 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
8063 the package up to date.
</p>
8065 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
8066 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About
10 days ago, I made
8067 a new upstream tarball with version number
2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
8068 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
8069 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
8070 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
8071 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
8072 upstream project at
<a href=
"http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah
</a>, and continue
8073 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
8074 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
8075 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
8076 working on the future release.
</p>
8078 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
8079 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.
</p>
8085 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>.
8090 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8094 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker
</a>
8100 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
8101 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
8102 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
8104 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
8105 gathering
</a>. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
8106 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
8107 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
8108 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
8109 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.
</p>
8111 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
8112 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
8117 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.
</li>
8119 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
8120 clock is in UTC.
</li>
8122 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
8123 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
8124 based boot sequencing
</a>, and enable concurrent booting.
</li>
8128 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
8129 <a href=
"http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
8132 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
8133 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut
6 seconds
8134 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
8135 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
8136 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
8139 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
8140 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
8141 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
8142 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
8143 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
8144 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
8145 insserv'. Will need to test if that work. :)
</p>
8151 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>.
8156 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8160 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand
</a>
8166 <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
8167 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
8168 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
8169 ulike land rundt om i verden. Resultatene er tendensiøse. For noen
8171 <a href=
"http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
8172 rapport
</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
8173 dagene. Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
8174 <a href=
"http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
8175 höftade Sverigesiffror
</a>, oppsummeres slik:
</p>
8178 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att
25 procent av all mjukvara i
8179 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
8180 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
8181 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
8184 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge? To andre kommentarer er
<a
8185 href=
"http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
8186 piracy figures need a shot of reality
</a> og
<a
8187 href=
"http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
8188 Copyright Treaty Work?
</a></p>
8190 <p>Fant lenkene via
<a
8191 href=
"http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
8192 på Slashdot
</a>.
</p>
8198 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>.
8203 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8207 <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>
8214 <a href=
"http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
8215 tall
</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet. Fikk meg til
8216 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
8217 jobber til daglig. En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har
490
8218 (
61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og
196
8219 (
25%) windowstjenere, samt
112 (
14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere. Med den
8220 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.
</p>
8226 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>.
8231 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8235 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis
</a>
8241 <p><a href=
"http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
8242 IT melder
</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
8243 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
8244 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer. Det er ingen tvil om
8245 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
8246 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
8247 bærbare. Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
8248 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
8249 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
8250 foreningsarbeide. Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
8251 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
8252 av dem. Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
8253 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
8254 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
8255 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker. Jeg har LVM på toppen
8256 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
8257 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare. Kostnaden når
8258 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
8259 betydelige. En bør dog passe på passordet. Hvis det går tapt, må
8260 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.
</p>
8262 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
8263 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
8264 krypteringsnøklene. Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
8265 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten. Jeg tror oddsene for at
8266 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
8267 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
8268 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
8275 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>.
8280 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8284 <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>
8290 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
8291 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
8292 do not yet know them.
</p>
8294 <p>The first one is
<a href=
"http://valgrind.org/">valgrind
</a>, a
8295 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
8296 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
8297 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
8298 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
8299 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
8300 occurs. It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
8301 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
8302 'using uninitialised value in control logic'. This tool has made it
8303 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
8304 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
8306 <p>The second one is
8307 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity
</a> which is
8308 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
8309 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
8310 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
8311 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
8312 and the company behind it is running
8313 <a href=
"http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service
</a> for the
8314 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
8315 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
8316 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
8317 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
8318 Y lines O to P can never be executed'. The projects included in the
8319 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
8320 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.
</p>
8322 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
8323 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
8324 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
8325 surrounded by today.
</p>
8331 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>.
8336 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8340 <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>
8347 <a href=
"http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
8348 patch is better than a useless patch
</a>. I completely disagree, as a
8349 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
8350 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
8351 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
8358 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>.
8363 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8367 <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>
8373 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
8374 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
8375 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
8376 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
8377 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
8378 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
8379 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
8382 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
8383 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
8384 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
8385 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
8386 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
8387 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
8388 blocked from doing so.
</p>
8390 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
8391 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
8392 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
8393 requirements change.
</p>
8395 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
8396 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
8397 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.
</p>
8403 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>.
8408 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8412 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering
</a>
8418 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
8419 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
8420 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
8421 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
8422 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
8423 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
8424 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
8425 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
8426 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
8427 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
8428 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
8429 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
8430 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
8431 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
8438 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>.
8443 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8447 <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>
8453 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
8454 optimal. There is RFC
2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
8455 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC
2307bis, with
8456 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
8457 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
8458 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.
</p>
8460 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux
</a>,
8461 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
8462 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
8463 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
8464 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
8465 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
8466 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
8467 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
8468 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
8469 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
8470 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
8471 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
8472 specifications to cleam up this mess.
</p>
8474 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
8475 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
8476 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
8477 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.
</p>
8479 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
8480 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.
</p>
8482 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
8483 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
8484 new IETF work group?
</p>
8490 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>.
8495 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8499 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut
</a>
8505 <p>Endelig er
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a>
8506 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny
</a> gitt ut.
8507 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
8508 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
8509 stabile utgaven av Debian. Neste steg er nå å få
8510 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> /
8511 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu
</a> ferdig
8512 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
8513 slippes løs på skolene. Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
8514 gjort dette mulig. Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
8515 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
8516 <tt>insserv
</tt>.
</p>
8522 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>.
8527 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8531 <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>
8537 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
8538 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
8539 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
8540 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the
10-network.
8541 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
8542 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
8543 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
8544 finish it before the weekend was up.
</p>
8546 <p>Did not find time to look at the
4 VGA cards in one box we got from
8547 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
8548 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
8549 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
8556 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>.
8561 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8565 <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>
8571 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
8572 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
8573 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
8574 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
8575 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
8576 notes are available on
8577 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
8578 Debian wiki
</a>. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
8579 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
8580 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
8581 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
8582 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
8583 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
8584 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
8585 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.
</p>
8587 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
8588 be the only one fitting our needs. :/
</p>
8594 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>.
8599 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8601 <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>
8612 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (
2)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (
3)
</a></li>
8616 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (
8)
</a></li>
8618 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (
7)
</a></li>
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1)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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11)
</a></li>
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9)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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7)
</a></li>
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9)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (
7)
</a></li>
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10)
</a></li>
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17)
</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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10)
</a></li>
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7)
</a></li>
8695 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (
16)
</a></li>
8697 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (
6)
</a></li>
8699 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (
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</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (
7)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (
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</a></li>
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</a></li>
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7)
</a></li>
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6)
</a></li>
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4)
</a></li>
8713 <li><a href=
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2)
</a></li>
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3)
</a></li>
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1)
</a></li>
8724 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (
2)
</a></li>
8726 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (
1)
</a></li>
8728 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (
3)
</a></li>
8730 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (
3)
</a></li>
8732 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (
9)
</a></li>
8734 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (
14)
</a></li>
8736 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (
12)
</a></li>
8738 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (
13)
</a></li>
8740 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (
7)
</a></li>
8742 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (
9)
</a></li>
8744 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (
13)
</a></li>
8746 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (
12)
</a></li>
8753 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (
8)
</a></li>
8755 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (
8)
</a></li>
8757 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (
12)
</a></li>
8759 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (
10)
</a></li>
8761 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (
9)
</a></li>
8763 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (
3)
</a></li>
8765 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (
4)
</a></li>
8767 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (
3)
</a></li>
8769 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (
1)
</a></li>
8771 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (
2)
</a></li>
8773 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (
3)
</a></li>
8775 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
8782 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (
5)
</a></li>
8784 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (
7)
</a></li>
8795 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (
13)
</a></li>
8797 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (
1)
</a></li>
8799 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (
1)
</a></li>
8801 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (
4)
</a></li>
8803 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (
8)
</a></li>
8805 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (
14)
</a></li>
8807 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (
2)
</a></li>
8809 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (
2)
</a></li>
8811 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (
105)
</a></li>
8813 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (
150)
</a></li>
8815 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (
10)
</a></li>
8817 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (
15)
</a></li>
8819 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (
12)
</a></li>
8821 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (
4)
</a></li>
8823 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (
257)
</a></li>
8825 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (
21)
</a></li>
8827 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (
12)
</a></li>
8829 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (
13)
</a></li>
8831 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (
8)
</a></li>
8833 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (
11)
</a></li>
8835 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (
41)
</a></li>
8837 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (
9)
</a></li>
8839 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (
19)
</a></li>
8841 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (
9)
</a></li>
8843 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (
8)
</a></li>
8845 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (
2)
</a></li>
8847 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (
1)
</a></li>
8849 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (
8)
</a></li>
8851 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (
31)
</a></li>
8853 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (
248)
</a></li>
8855 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (
162)
</a></li>
8857 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (
11)
</a></li>
8859 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (
2)
</a></li>
8861 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (
48)
</a></li>
8863 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (
75)
</a></li>
8865 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (
1)
</a></li>
8867 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (
1)
</a></li>
8869 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (
11)
</a></li>
8871 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (
3)
</a></li>
8873 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (
9)
</a></li>
8875 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (
1)
</a></li>
8877 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (
4)
</a></li>
8879 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (
2)
</a></li>
8881 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (
41)
</a></li>
8883 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (
4)
</a></li>
8885 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (
4)
</a></li>
8887 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (
45)
</a></li>
8889 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (
3)
</a></li>
8891 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (
9)
</a></li>
8893 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (
26)
</a></li>
8895 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (
1)
</a></li>
8897 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (
8)
</a></li>
8899 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (
43)
</a></li>
8901 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (
4)
</a></li>
8903 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (
33)
</a></li>
8909 <p style=
"text-align: right">
8910 Created by
<a href=
"http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6
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