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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         19th February 2016
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
  32 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
  33 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
  34 the code in the package in question, preferably in
  35 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
  36 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
  37
  38 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
  39 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
  40 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
  41 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
  42 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
  43 out what was wrong with
  44 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
  45 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
  46 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
  47 semi-automatically.</p>
  48
  49 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
  50 file based on the code in the source package,
  51 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
  52 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
  53 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
  54 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
  55 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
  56 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
  57 option in
  58 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
  59 blog posts from 2014</a>.
  60
  61 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
  62
  63 <p><pre>
  64 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
  65 </pre></p>
  66
  67 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
  68 this might not be the best option.</p>
  69
  70 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
  71 this approach in
  72 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
  73 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
  74 dpkg-copyright' option:
  75
  76 <p><pre>
  77 cme update dpkg-copyright
  78 </pre></p>
  79
  80 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
  81 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
  82
  83 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
  84 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
  85 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
  86 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
  87 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
  88 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
  89 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
  90 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
  91 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
  92 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
  93
  94 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
  95 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
  96 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
  97 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
  98
  99 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
 100 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
 101 planet.debian.org.</p>
 102
 103 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 104 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 105 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 106
 107 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
 108 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
 109
 110 <p><pre>
 111 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
 112   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
 113 </pre></p>
 114
 115 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
 116 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
 117 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
 118 with my packages in the future.</p>
 119
 120 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
 121 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
 122 command line.</p>
 123
 124       </div>
 125       <div class="tags">
 126
 127
 128         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>.
 129
 130
 131       </div>
 132     </div>
 133     <div class="padding"></div>
 134
 135     <div class="entry">
 136       <div class="title">
 137         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
 138       </div>
 139       <div class="date">
 140          4th February 2016
 141       </div>
 142       <div class="body">
 143         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
 144 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
 145 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
 146 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
 147 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
 148 about. :)</p>
 149
 150 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
 151 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
 152 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
 153 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
 154 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
 155 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
 156
 157 <blockquote><pre>
 158 % apt install appstream
 159 [...]
 160 % apt update
 161 [...]
 162 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
 163   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
 164 firmware-qlogic
 165 %
 166 </pre></blockquote>
 167
 168 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
 169 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
 170 a way appstream can use.</p>
 171
 172 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
 173 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
 174 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
 175 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
 176 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
 177 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
 178
 179 <blockquote><pre>
 180 % apt install appstream
 181 [...]
 182 % apt update
 183 [...]
 184 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
 185   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
 186 bkchem
 187 phototonic
 188 inkscape
 189 shutter
 190 tetzle
 191 geeqie
 192 xia
 193 pinta
 194 gthumb
 195 karbon
 196 comix
 197 mirage
 198 viewnior
 199 postr
 200 ristretto
 201 kolourpaint4
 202 eog
 203 eom
 204 gimagereader
 205 midori
 206 %
 207 </pre></blockquote>
 208
 209 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
 210 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
 211
 212       </div>
 213       <div class="tags">
 214
 215
 216         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 217
 218
 219       </div>
 220     </div>
 221     <div class="padding"></div>
 222
 223     <div class="entry">
 224       <div class="title">
 225         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
 226       </div>
 227       <div class="date">
 228         24th January 2016
 229       </div>
 230       <div class="body">
 231         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
 232 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
 233 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
 234 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
 235 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
 236 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
 237 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
 238 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
 239 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
 240 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
 241 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
 242 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
 243 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
 244 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
 245 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
 246 entities.</p>
 247
 248 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
 249
 250 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
 251 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
 252 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
 253 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
 254 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
 255 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
 256 tool to do so is called
 257 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
 258 discovered it when I read
 259 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
 260 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
 261 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
 262 The python program was in Debian, but
 263 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
 264 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
 265 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
 266 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
 267 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
 268 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
 269 are now included
 270 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
 271
 272 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
 273 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
 274 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
 275 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
 276 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
 277 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
 278 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
 279 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
 280 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
 281 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
 282 about yourself with the services.</p>
 283
 284 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
 285 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
 286 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
 287 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
 288 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
 289 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
 290 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
 291 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
 292 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
 293 things.  A similar technique have been
 294 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
 295 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
 296 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
 297 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
 298 public.</p>
 299
 300 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
 301 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
 302 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
 303 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
 304
 305 <p>(I have uploaded
 306 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
 307 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
 308 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
 309
 310       </div>
 311       <div class="tags">
 312
 313
 314         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 315
 316
 317       </div>
 318     </div>
 319     <div class="padding"></div>
 320
 321     <div class="entry">
 322       <div class="title">
 323         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
 324       </div>
 325       <div class="date">
 326         15th January 2016
 327       </div>
 328       <div class="body">
 329         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
 330 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
 331 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
 332 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
 333 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
 334 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
 335 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
 336 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
 337 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
 338 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
 339 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
 340 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
 341 was not the first to propose this, as the
 342 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
 343 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
 344 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
 345 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
 346
 347 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
 348 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
 349 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
 350 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
 351 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
 352
 353 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
 354 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
 355 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
 356 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
 357 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
 358 done in /etc/.</p>
 359
 360 <blockquote><pre>
 361 apt install apt-transport-tor
 362 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
 363 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
 364 </pre></blockquote>
 365
 366 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
 367 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
 368 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
 369 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
 370
 371 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
 372 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
 373 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
 374 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
 375 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
 376 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
 377
 378 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
 379 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
 380 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
 381 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
 382 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
 383
 384 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
 385 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
 386 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
 387 system.</p>
 388
 389       </div>
 390       <div class="tags">
 391
 392
 393         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>.
 394
 395
 396       </div>
 397     </div>
 398     <div class="padding"></div>
 399
 400     <div class="entry">
 401       <div class="title">
 402         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
 403       </div>
 404       <div class="date">
 405         23rd December 2015
 406       </div>
 407       <div class="body">
 408         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
 409 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
 410 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
 411 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
 412 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
 413 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
 414
 415 <p>A few days I came across
 416 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
 417 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
 418 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
 419 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
 420 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
 421 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
 422 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
 423 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
 424 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
 425 discovered the developer
 426 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
 427 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
 428 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
 429 archive.</p>
 430
 431 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
 432 it into Debian, where it currently
 433 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
 434 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
 435
 436 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
 437 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
 438 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
 439 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
 440 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
 441 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
 442 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
 443 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
 444 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
 445 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
 446 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
 447 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
 448
 449 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
 450 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
 451 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
 452 package show up in unstable.</p>
 453
 454       </div>
 455       <div class="tags">
 456
 457
 458         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 459
 460
 461       </div>
 462     </div>
 463     <div class="padding"></div>
 464
 465     <div class="entry">
 466       <div class="title">
 467         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
 468       </div>
 469       <div class="date">
 470         20th December 2015
 471       </div>
 472       <div class="body">
 473         <p>Around three years ago, I created
 474 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
 475 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
 476 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
 477 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
 478 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
 479 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
 480 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
 481 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
 482 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
 483 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
 484 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
 485 with.</p>
 486
 487 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
 488 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
 489 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
 490 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
 491 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
 492 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
 493 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
 494 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
 495 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
 496 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
 497 Debian version of appstream.</p>
 498
 499 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
 500 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
 501 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
 502 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
 503 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
 504 how do add the required
 505 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
 506 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
 507 this content:</p>
 508
 509 <blockquote><pre>
 510 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
 511 &lt;component&gt;
 512   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
 513   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
 514   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
 515   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
 516   &lt;description&gt;
 517     &lt;p&gt;
 518       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
 519       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
 520       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
 521       launcher.
 522     &lt;/p&gt;
 523   &lt;/description&gt;
 524   &lt;provides&gt;
 525     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
 526   &lt;/provides&gt;
 527 &lt;/component&gt;
 528 </pre></blockquote>
 529
 530 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
 531 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
 532 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
 533 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
 534 0202.</p>
 535
 536 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
 537 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
 538 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
 539 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
 540 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
 541 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
 542 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
 543 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
 544
 545 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
 546 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
 547 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
 548 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
 549 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
 550
 551 <blockquote><pre>
 552 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
 553 </pre></blockquote>
 554
 555 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
 556 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
 557 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
 558 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
 559 question.</p>
 560
 561 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
 562 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
 563
 564 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
 565 try running this command on the command line:</p>
 566
 567 <blockquote><pre>
 568 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
 569 </pre></blockquote>
 570
 571 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
 572 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
 573 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
 574
 575       </div>
 576       <div class="tags">
 577
 578
 579         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>.
 580
 581
 582       </div>
 583     </div>
 584     <div class="padding"></div>
 585
 586     <div class="entry">
 587       <div class="title">
 588         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
 589       </div>
 590       <div class="date">
 591         30th November 2015
 592       </div>
 593       <div class="body">
 594         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
 595 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
 596 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
 597 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
 598 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
 599
 600 <blockquote>
 601
 602 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
 603
 604 <blockquote>
 605 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
 606
 607 The first step is to choose a
 608 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
 609 code.<br/>
 610
 611 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
 612 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
 613
 614 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
 615 work<br/>
 616
 617 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
 618 </blockquote>
 619
 620 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
 621 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
 622 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
 623 0x57</a></small></p>
 624
 625 <p>As the Debian Website
 626 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
 627 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
 628 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
 629 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
 630 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
 631 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
 632 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
 633 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
 634 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
 635 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
 636 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
 637 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
 638 Freedom">FaiF</a>
 639 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
 640 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
 641 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
 642 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
 643 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
 644 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
 645 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
 646 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
 647 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
 648 In March the SFC supported a
 649 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
 650 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
 651 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
 652 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
 653 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
 654 conferences
 655 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
 656 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
 657 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
 658 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
 659 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
 660 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
 661 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
 662 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
 663 Software.</p>
 664
 665 <p>If you support Free Software,
 666 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
 667 what the SFC do, agree with their
 668 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
 669 principles</a>, are happy about their
 670 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
 671 work on a project that is an SFC
 672 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
 673 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
 674 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
 675 Allan Webber</a>,
 676 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
 677 Smith</a>,
 678 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
 679 Bacon</a>, myself and
 680 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
 681 becoming a
 682 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
 683 next week your donation will be
 684 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
 685 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
 686 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
 687 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
 688 social media accounts.</p>
 689
 690 </blockquote>
 691
 692 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
 693 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
 694 supporter too?</p>
 695
 696       </div>
 697       <div class="tags">
 698
 699
 700         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
 701
 702
 703       </div>
 704     </div>
 705     <div class="padding"></div>
 706
 707     <div class="entry">
 708       <div class="title">
 709         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
 710       </div>
 711       <div class="date">
 712         17th November 2015
 713       </div>
 714       <div class="body">
 715         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
 716 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
 717 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
 718 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
 719 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
 720 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
 721 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
 722 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
 723 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
 724 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
 725
 726 <pre>
 727 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
 728       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
 729 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
 730 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
 731 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 732 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 733 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 734 </pre>
 735
 736 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
 737 my old key.</p>
 738
 739 <p>If you signed my old key
 740 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
 741 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
 742 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
 743 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
 744
 745       </div>
 746       <div class="tags">
 747
 748
 749         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>.
 750
 751
 752       </div>
 753     </div>
 754     <div class="padding"></div>
 755
 756     <div class="entry">
 757       <div class="title">
 758         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
 759       </div>
 760       <div class="date">
 761         24th September 2015
 762       </div>
 763       <div class="body">
 764         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
 765 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
 766 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
 767 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
 768 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
 769 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
 770 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
 771
 772 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
 773
 774 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
 775 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
 776 by someone else.  I found
 777 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
 778 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
 779 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
 780 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
 781 from him.  Via
 782 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
 783 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
 784 discovered
 785 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
 786 available in Debian.</p>
 787
 788 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
 789 battery stats ever since. Now my
 790 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
 791 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
 792 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
 793 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
 794
 795 <pre>
 796 #!/bin/sh
 797 # Inspired by
 798 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
 799 # See also
 800 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
 801 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
 802
 803 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
 804     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
 805
 806 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
 807     (
 808         printf "timestamp,"
 809         for f in $files; do
 810             printf "%s," $f
 811         done
 812         echo
 813     ) > "$logfile"
 814 fi
 815
 816 log_battery() {
 817     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
 818     # when several log processes run in parallel.
 819     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
 820         for f in $files; do \
 821             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
 822         done)
 823     echo "$msg"
 824 }
 825
 826 cd /sys/class/power_supply
 827
 828 for bat in BAT*; do
 829     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
 830 done
 831 </pre>
 832
 833 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
 834 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
 835 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
 836 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
 837 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
 838 The code for the Debian package
 839 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
 840 available on github</a>.</p>
 841
 842 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
 843
 844 <pre>
 845 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
 846 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
 847 [...]
 848 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 849 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 850 </pre>
 851
 852 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
 853 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
 854 battery.</p>
 855
 856 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
 857 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
 858 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
 859 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
 860 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
 861 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
 862 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
 863 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
 864 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
 865 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
 866 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
 867 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
 868 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
 869 Linux too.</p>
 870
 871 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
 872 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
 873 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
 874 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
 875 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
 876 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
 877 load).</p>
 878
 879 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
 880 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
 881 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
 882 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
 883 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
 884 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
 885 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
 886 those.</p>
 887
 888 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
 889 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
 890 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
 891 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
 892 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
 893 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
 894 specific.</p>
 895
 896       </div>
 897       <div class="tags">
 898
 899
 900         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>.
 901
 902
 903       </div>
 904     </div>
 905     <div class="padding"></div>
 906
 907     <div class="entry">
 908       <div class="title">
 909         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
 910       </div>
 911       <div class="date">
 912          5th July 2015
 913       </div>
 914       <div class="body">
 915         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
 916 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
 917 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
 918 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
 919 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
 920 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
 921 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
 922 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
 923 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
 924 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
 925 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
 926
 927 <p>One tip I got was to use the
 928 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
 929 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
 930 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
 931 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
 932 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
 933 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
 934
 935 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
 936 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
 937 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
 938 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
 939 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
 940 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
 941 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
 942 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
 943 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
 944 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
 945 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
 946 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
 947 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
 948 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
 949 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
 950
 951 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
 952 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
 953 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
 954 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
 955
 956 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
 957 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
 958
 959 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
 960 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
 961 different
 962 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
 963 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
 964
 965       </div>
 966       <div class="tags">
 967
 968
 969         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>.
 970
 971
 972       </div>
 973     </div>
 974     <div class="padding"></div>
 975
 976     <div class="entry">
 977       <div class="title">
 978         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
 979       </div>
 980       <div class="date">
 981          3rd July 2015
 982       </div>
 983       <div class="body">
 984         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
 985 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
 986 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
 987 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
 988 flickering.</p>
 989
 990 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
 991 still as
 992 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
 993 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
 994 good help from
 995 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
 996 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
 997 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
 998 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
 999 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
1000 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
1001 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
1002 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
1003 deteriorated since X41.</p>
1004
1005 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
1006 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
1007 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
1008 have suggestions.</p>
1009
1010 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
1011 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
1012 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
1013
1014       </div>
1015       <div class="tags">
1016
1017
1018         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>.
1019
1020
1021       </div>
1022     </div>
1023     <div class="padding"></div>
1024
1025     <div class="entry">
1026       <div class="title">
1027         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
1028       </div>
1029       <div class="date">
1030         22nd November 2014
1031       </div>
1032       <div class="body">
1033         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
1034 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
1035 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
1036 courtesy of
1037 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
1038 Schubert</a> and
1039 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
1040 McVittie</a>.
1041
1042 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
1043 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
1044 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
1045 you upgrade:</p>
1046
1047 <p><blockquote><pre>
1048 Package: systemd-sysv
1049 Pin: release o=Debian
1050 Pin-Priority: -1
1051 </pre></blockquote><p>
1052
1053 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
1054 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
1055 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
1056 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
1057 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
1058
1059 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
1060 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
1061 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
1062 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
1063 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
1064 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
1065
1066 <p><blockquote><pre>
1067 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
1068 </pre></blockquote><p>
1069
1070 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
1071
1072 <p><blockquote><pre>
1073 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
1074 </pre></blockquote><p>
1075
1076 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
1077 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
1078
1079 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
1080 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
1081 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
1082 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
1083 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
1084 Jessie is released.</p>
1085
1086 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
1087 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
1088 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
1089 line.</p>
1090
1091       </div>
1092       <div class="tags">
1093
1094
1095         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>.
1096
1097
1098       </div>
1099     </div>
1100     <div class="padding"></div>
1101
1102     <div class="entry">
1103       <div class="title">
1104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
1105       </div>
1106       <div class="date">
1107         10th November 2014
1108       </div>
1109       <div class="body">
1110         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
1111 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
1112 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
1113
1114 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
1115 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
1116 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
1117 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
1118 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
1119 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
1120 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
1121 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
1122 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
1123 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
1124 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
1125 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
1126 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
1127 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
1128 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
1129
1130 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
1131 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
1132 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
1133 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
1134 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
1135 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
1136 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
1137 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
1138 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
1139 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
1140 were fairly easy, and
1141 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
1142 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
1143 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
1144 useful approach.</p>
1145
1146 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
1147 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
1148 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
1149 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
1150 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
1151 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
1152 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
1153 this:</p>
1154
1155 <p><blockquote><pre>
1156 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
1157   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
1158 </pre></blockquote></p>
1159
1160 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
1161 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
1162
1163 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
1164 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
1165 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
1166 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
1167 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
1168 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
1169 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
1170 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
1171 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
1172 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
1173 system.</p>
1174
1175 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
1176 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
1177 SMTorP. :)</p>
1178
1179       </div>
1180       <div class="tags">
1181
1182
1183         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1184
1185
1186       </div>
1187     </div>
1188     <div class="padding"></div>
1189
1190     <div class="entry">
1191       <div class="title">
1192         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
1193       </div>
1194       <div class="date">
1195         22nd October 2014
1196       </div>
1197       <div class="body">
1198         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
1199 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
1200 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
1201 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
1202 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
1203 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
1204 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
1205 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
1206 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
1207 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
1208 lists I recently took over:</p>
1209
1210 <p><blockquote><pre>
1211 % time listadmin xiph
1212 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1213 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1214
1215 real    0m1.709s
1216 user    0m0.232s
1217 sys     0m0.012s
1218 %
1219 </pre></blockquote></p>
1220
1221 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
1222 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
1223 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
1224 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
1225 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
1226 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
1227 program.</p>
1228
1229 <p>If you install
1230 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
1231 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
1232 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
1233
1234 <p><blockquote><pre>
1235 username username@example.org
1236 spamlevel 23
1237 default discard
1238 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
1239
1240 password secret
1241 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
1242 mailman-list@lists.example.com
1243
1244 password hidden
1245 other-list@otherserver.example.org
1246 </pre></blockquote></p>
1247
1248 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
1249 learn the details.</p>
1250
1251 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
1252 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
1253 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
1254 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
1255
1256 <p><blockquote><pre>
1257 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
1258 </pre></blockquote></p>
1259
1260 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
1261 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
1262 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
1263 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
1264 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
1265 email.</p>
1266
1267 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
1268 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
1269 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
1270 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
1271 software.</p>
1272
1273 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1274 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1275 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1276
1277 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
1278 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
1279 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
1280 sure why.</p>
1281
1282       </div>
1283       <div class="tags">
1284
1285
1286         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
1287
1288
1289       </div>
1290     </div>
1291     <div class="padding"></div>
1292
1293     <div class="entry">
1294       <div class="title">
1295         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
1296       </div>
1297       <div class="date">
1298         17th October 2014
1299       </div>
1300       <div class="body">
1301         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
1302 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
1303 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
1304 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
1305 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
1306 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
1307 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
1308
1309 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
1310 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
1311 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
1312 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
1313 of this story.)</p>
1314
1315 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
1316 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
1317 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
1318 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
1319 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
1320 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
1321 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
1322 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
1323 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
1324 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
1325
1326 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
1327 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
1328 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
1329 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
1330
1331 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
1332 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
1333
1334 <p><blockquote><pre>
1335 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
1336 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
1337 </pre></blockquote></p>
1338
1339 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
1340 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
1341 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
1342 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
1343 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
1344 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
1345 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
1346 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
1347
1348 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
1349 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
1350
1351 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
1352 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
1353 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
1354 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
1355 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
1356
1357 <p><blockquote><pre>
1358 Task: isenkram-packages
1359 Section: hardware
1360 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1361  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1362  proposed.
1363 Test-new-install: show show
1364 Relevance: 8
1365 Packages: for-current-hardware
1366
1367 Task: isenkram-firmware
1368 Section: hardware
1369 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1370  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
1371  packages are proposed.
1372 Test-new-install: mark show
1373 Relevance: 8
1374 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
1375 </pre></blockquote></p>
1376
1377 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
1378 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
1379 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
1380 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
1381 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
1382
1383 <p><blockquote><pre>
1384 #!/bin/sh
1385 #
1386 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
1387 export PATH
1388 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1389 </pre></blockquote></p>
1390
1391 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
1392 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
1393
1394 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
1395 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
1396 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
1397 install.</p>
1398
1399 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
1400 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
1401 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
1402
1403       </div>
1404       <div class="tags">
1405
1406
1407         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
1408
1409
1410       </div>
1411     </div>
1412     <div class="padding"></div>
1413
1414     <div class="entry">
1415       <div class="title">
1416         <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>
1417       </div>
1418       <div class="date">
1419          4th October 2014
1420       </div>
1421       <div class="body">
1422         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
1423 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
1424 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
1425 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
1426
1427 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
1428
1429 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
1430 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
1431 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
1432
1433       </div>
1434       <div class="tags">
1435
1436
1437         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>.
1438
1439
1440       </div>
1441     </div>
1442     <div class="padding"></div>
1443
1444     <div class="entry">
1445       <div class="title">
1446         <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>
1447       </div>
1448       <div class="date">
1449          4th October 2014
1450       </div>
1451       <div class="body">
1452         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
1453 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
1454 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
1455 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
1456 Dibb.</p>
1457
1458 <p>I just wrapped up
1459 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
1460 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
1461 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
1462 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
1463 0.17.</p>
1464
1465 <ul>
1466
1467  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
1468  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
1469    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
1470  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
1471  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
1472  <li>Fix include orders</li>
1473  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
1474  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
1475  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
1476    the palette size is the same.</li>
1477  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
1478  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
1479  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
1480  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
1481    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
1482
1483 </ul>
1484
1485 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
1486 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
1487 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
1488
1489       </div>
1490       <div class="tags">
1491
1492
1493         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>.
1494
1495
1496       </div>
1497     </div>
1498     <div class="padding"></div>
1499
1500     <div class="entry">
1501       <div class="title">
1502         <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>
1503       </div>
1504       <div class="date">
1505         26th September 2014
1506       </div>
1507       <div class="body">
1508         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1509 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
1510 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
1511 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
1512 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
1513 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
1514 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
1515 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
1516 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
1517 future.  The
1518 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
1519 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
1520 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
1521 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
1522 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
1523
1524 <p>First, download the test ISO via
1525 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
1526 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
1527 or rsync (use
1528 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
1529 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
1530 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
1531 install with some tweaking.</p>
1532
1533 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
1534 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
1535
1536 <p><blockquote><pre>
1537 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
1538 </pre></blockquote></p>
1539
1540 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
1541 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
1542 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
1543 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
1544
1545 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
1546 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
1547 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
1548 your need.</p>
1549
1550 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
1551 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
1552 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
1553 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
1554 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
1555 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
1556 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
1557 days.</p>
1558
1559 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
1560 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
1561 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
1562 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
1563 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
1564 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
1565 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
1566 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
1567 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
1568
1569 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
1570 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
1571 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
1572
1573       </div>
1574       <div class="tags">
1575
1576
1577         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>.
1578
1579
1580       </div>
1581     </div>
1582     <div class="padding"></div>
1583
1584     <div class="entry">
1585       <div class="title">
1586         <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>
1587       </div>
1588       <div class="date">
1589         25th September 2014
1590       </div>
1591       <div class="body">
1592         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
1593 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
1594 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
1595 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
1596 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
1597 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
1598 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
1599 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
1600 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
1601 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
1602 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
1603 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
1604 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
1605
1606 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
1607 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
1608 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
1609 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
1610 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
1611 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
1612 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
1613 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
1614 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
1615 list</a>. :)</p>
1616
1617       </div>
1618       <div class="tags">
1619
1620
1621         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>.
1622
1623
1624       </div>
1625     </div>
1626     <div class="padding"></div>
1627
1628     <div class="entry">
1629       <div class="title">
1630         <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>
1631       </div>
1632       <div class="date">
1633         16th September 2014
1634       </div>
1635       <div class="body">
1636         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
1637 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
1638 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
1639 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
1640 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
1641 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
1642 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
1643 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
1644 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
1645 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
1646 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
1647 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
1648 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
1649 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
1650
1651 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
1652 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
1653 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
1654 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
1655 depend on the small and clever package
1656 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
1657 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
1658 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
1659 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
1660 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
1661 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
1662 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
1663 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
1664 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
1665 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
1666 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
1667
1668 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
1669 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
1670 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
1671 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
1672 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
1673 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
1674 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
1675 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
1676 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
1677 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
1678 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
1679 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
1680 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
1681 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
1682 dialog.</p>
1683
1684 <p><table>
1685
1686 <tr>
1687 <th>Machine/setup</th>
1688 <th>Original tasksel</th>
1689 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
1690 <th>Reduction</th>
1691 </tr>
1692
1693 <tr>
1694 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
1695 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
1696 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
1697 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
1698 </tr>
1699
1700 <tr>
1701 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
1702 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
1703 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
1704 <td>23 min 40%</td>
1705 </tr>
1706
1707 <tr>
1708 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
1709 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
1710 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
1711 <td>11 min 50%</td>
1712 </tr>
1713
1714 <tr>
1715 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
1716 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
1717 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
1718 <td>2 min 33%</td>
1719 </tr>
1720
1721 <tr>
1722 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
1723 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
1724 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
1725 <td>4 min 21%</td>
1726 </tr>
1727
1728 </table></p>
1729
1730 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
1731 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
1732 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
1733 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
1734 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
1735 installed.</p>
1736
1737 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
1738 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
1739 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
1740 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
1741 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
1742 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
1743 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
1744 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
1745 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
1746 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
1747 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
1748 for the entire installation.</p>
1749
1750 <p>I've implemented this in the
1751 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
1752 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
1753 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
1754 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
1755 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
1756
1757 <p><blockquote><pre>
1758 #!/bin/sh
1759 set -e
1760 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1761 info() {
1762     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
1763 }
1764 error() {
1765     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
1766 }
1767 override_install() {
1768     apt-install eatmydata || true
1769     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
1770         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1771             file=/usr/bin/$bin
1772             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
1773             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
1774                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
1775                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
1776                     > /target$file.edu
1777                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
1778                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1779                     --rename --quiet --add $file
1780                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
1781             else
1782                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
1783             fi
1784         done
1785     else
1786         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
1787     fi
1788 }
1789
1790 override_install
1791 </pre></blockquote></p>
1792
1793 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
1794 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
1795
1796 <p><blockquote><pre>
1797 #! /bin/sh -e
1798 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1799 error() {
1800     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
1801 }
1802 remove_install_override() {
1803     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
1804         file=/usr/bin/$bin
1805         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
1806             rm /target$file
1807             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
1808                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
1809             rm /target$file.edu
1810         else
1811             error "Missing divert for $file."
1812         fi
1813     done
1814     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
1815 }
1816
1817 remove_install_override
1818 </pre></blockquote></p>
1819
1820 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
1821 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
1822 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
1823
1824 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
1825 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
1826 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
1827 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
1828 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
1829 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
1830 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
1831 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
1832 everyone.</p>
1833
1834 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
1835 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
1836 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
1837 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
1838
1839 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
1840 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
1841 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1842 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
1843 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
1844
1845 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
1846 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
1847 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1848 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
1849 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
1850
1851       </div>
1852       <div class="tags">
1853
1854
1855         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>.
1856
1857
1858       </div>
1859     </div>
1860     <div class="padding"></div>
1861
1862     <div class="entry">
1863       <div class="title">
1864         <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>
1865       </div>
1866       <div class="date">
1867         10th September 2014
1868       </div>
1869       <div class="body">
1870         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
1871 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
1872 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
1873 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
1874 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
1875 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
1876 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
1877 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
1878 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
1879 those problems are gone now.</p>
1880
1881 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
1882 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
1883 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
1884 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
1885 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
1886
1887 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
1888 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
1889 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
1890
1891 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
1892 line:</p>
1893
1894 <p><blockquote><pre>
1895 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
1896 </pre></blockquote></p>
1897
1898 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
1899 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
1900 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
1901 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
1902
1903 <p><blockquote><pre>
1904 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
1905 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
1906 %
1907 </pre></blockquote></p>
1908
1909 <p>Now if only
1910 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
1911 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
1912 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
1913 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
1914 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
1915 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
1916 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
1917 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
1918 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
1919
1920       </div>
1921       <div class="tags">
1922
1923
1924         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>.
1925
1926
1927       </div>
1928     </div>
1929     <div class="padding"></div>
1930
1931     <div class="entry">
1932       <div class="title">
1933         <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>
1934       </div>
1935       <div class="date">
1936         17th June 2014
1937       </div>
1938       <div class="body">
1939         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1940 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
1941 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
1942 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
1943 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
1944
1945 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
1946 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
1947 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
1948 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
1949 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
1950 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
1951 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
1952 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
1953 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
1954 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
1955 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
1956 goals.</p>
1957
1958 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
1959 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
1960 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
1961 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
1962 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
1963 chapters together into one large web page (aka
1964 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
1965 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
1966 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
1967 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
1968 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
1969 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
1970 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
1971 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
1972 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
1973 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
1974 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
1975 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
1976 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
1977 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
1978 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
1979 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
1980 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
1981 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
1982
1983 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
1984 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
1985 track the English original.  For this we use the
1986 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
1987 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
1988 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
1989 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
1990 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
1991 files), which the translations update with the native language
1992 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
1993 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
1994 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
1995 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
1996 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
1997 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
1998 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
1999 of the documentation.</p>
2000
2001 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
2002 recommend using
2003 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
2004 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
2005 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
2006 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
2007 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
2008 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
2009 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
2010 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
2011
2012 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
2013 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
2014 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
2015 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
2016 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
2017 translated images by storing translated versions in
2018 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
2019 package maintainers know more.</p>
2020
2021 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
2022 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
2023 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
2024 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
2025 PDF version</a> or the
2026 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
2027 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
2028 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
2029
2030 <p>To learn more, check out
2031 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
2032 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
2033 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
2034 manual on the wiki</a> and
2035 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
2036 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
2037
2038       </div>
2039       <div class="tags">
2040
2041
2042         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>.
2043
2044
2045       </div>
2046     </div>
2047     <div class="padding"></div>
2048
2049     <div class="entry">
2050       <div class="title">
2051         <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>
2052       </div>
2053       <div class="date">
2054         23rd April 2014
2055       </div>
2056       <div class="body">
2057         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
2058 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
2059 So I implemented one, using
2060 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
2061 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
2062 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
2063 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
2064 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
2065 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
2066
2067 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
2068 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
2069 packages to install.  The first part is in
2070 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
2071 this:</p>
2072
2073 <p><blockquote><pre>
2074 Task: isenkram
2075 Section: hardware
2076 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2077  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2078  proposed.
2079 Test-new-install: mark show
2080 Relevance: 8
2081 Packages: for-current-hardware
2082 </pre></blockquote></p>
2083
2084 <p>The second part is in
2085 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
2086 this:</p>
2087
2088 <p><blockquote><pre>
2089 #!/bin/sh
2090 #
2091 (
2092     isenkram-lookup
2093     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2094 ) | sort -u
2095 </pre></blockquote></p>
2096
2097 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
2098 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
2099 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
2100 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
2101 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
2102 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
2103
2104 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
2105 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
2106 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
2107 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
2108 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
2109 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
2110 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
2111 the python-apt code (bug
2112 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
2113 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
2114 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
2115 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
2116 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
2117 unstable today.</p>
2118
2119 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
2120 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
2121 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
2122 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
2123 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
2124 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
2125 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
2126 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
2127 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
2128
2129 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
2130 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
2131 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
2132 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
2133 package.  See also
2134 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
2135 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
2136 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
2137 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
2138
2139       </div>
2140       <div class="tags">
2141
2142
2143         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>.
2144
2145
2146       </div>
2147     </div>
2148     <div class="padding"></div>
2149
2150     <div class="entry">
2151       <div class="title">
2152         <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>
2153       </div>
2154       <div class="date">
2155         15th April 2014
2156       </div>
2157       <div class="body">
2158         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2159 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
2160 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
2161 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
2162 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
2163 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
2164
2165 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
2166 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
2167 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
2168 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
2169 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
2170 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
2171 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
2172
2173 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
2174 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
2175 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
2176 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
2177 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
2178 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
2179 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
2180 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
2181 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
2182 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
2183 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
2184 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
2185
2186 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
2187 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
2188 become root:</p>
2189
2190 <p><pre>
2191 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2192   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2193   u-boot-tools
2194 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2195   freedom-maker
2196 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2197 </pre></p>
2198
2199 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2200 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
2201 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
2202 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
2203 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
2204 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
2205 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
2206 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
2207
2208 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2209 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2210 the preseed values:</p>
2211
2212 <p><pre>
2213 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2214 </pre></p>
2215
2216 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
2217 it still work.</p>
2218
2219 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
2220 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
2221 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
2222 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
2223 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
2224 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
2225 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
2226
2227 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2228 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2229 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2230 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2231 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2232 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2233
2234       </div>
2235       <div class="tags">
2236
2237
2238         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>.
2239
2240
2241       </div>
2242     </div>
2243     <div class="padding"></div>
2244
2245     <div class="entry">
2246       <div class="title">
2247         <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>
2248       </div>
2249       <div class="date">
2250          9th April 2014
2251       </div>
2252       <div class="body">
2253         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
2254 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
2255 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
2256 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
2257 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
2258 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
2259 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
2260 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
2261 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
2262 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
2263 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
2264 have looked at a system called
2265 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
2266 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
2267
2268 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
2269 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
2270 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
2271 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
2272 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
2273 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
2274 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
2275 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
2276 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
2277 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
2278 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
2279 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
2280 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
2281
2282 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
2283 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
2284 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
2285 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
2286 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
2287 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
2288 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
2289 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
2290 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
2291 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
2292 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
2293 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
2294 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
2295 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
2296 account.</p>
2297
2298 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
2299 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
2300 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
2301 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
2302 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
2303 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
2304 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
2305
2306 <p><blockquote><pre>
2307 [s3c]
2308 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2309 backend-login: API-login
2310 backend-password: API-password
2311 fs-passphrase: local-password
2312 </pre></blockquote></p>
2313
2314 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
2315 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
2316 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
2317 details and password to create it:</p>
2318
2319 <p><blockquote><pre>
2320 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
2321 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2322   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2323 Enter backend login:
2324 Enter backend password:
2325 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
2326 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
2327 Enter encryption password:
2328 Confirm encryption password:
2329 Generating random encryption key...
2330 Creating metadata tables...
2331 Dumping metadata...
2332 ..objects..
2333 ..blocks..
2334 ..inodes..
2335 ..inode_blocks..
2336 ..symlink_targets..
2337 ..names..
2338 ..contents..
2339 ..ext_attributes..
2340 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2341 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
2342 # </pre></blockquote></p>
2343
2344 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
2345
2346 <p><blockquote><pre>
2347 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2348   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2349 Using 4 upload threads.
2350 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
2351 Reading metadata...
2352 ..objects..
2353 ..blocks..
2354 ..inodes..
2355 ..inode_blocks..
2356 ..symlink_targets..
2357 ..names..
2358 ..contents..
2359 ..ext_attributes..
2360 Mounting filesystem...
2361 # df -h /s3ql
2362 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
2363 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
2364 #
2365 </pre></blockquote></p>
2366
2367 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
2368 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
2369 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
2370 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
2371 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
2372 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
2373
2374 <p><blockquote><pre>
2375 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
2376 #
2377 </pre></blockquote></p>
2378
2379 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
2380 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
2381 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
2382 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
2383 file system:</p>
2384
2385 <p><blockquote><pre>
2386 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2387 Using cached metadata.
2388 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
2389 Checking DB integrity...
2390 Creating temporary extra indices...
2391 Checking lost+found...
2392 Checking cached objects...
2393 Checking names (refcounts)...
2394 Checking contents (names)...
2395 Checking contents (inodes)...
2396 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
2397 Checking objects (reference counts)...
2398 Checking objects (backend)...
2399 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
2400 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
2401 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
2402 Checking objects (sizes)...
2403 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
2404 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
2405 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
2406 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
2407 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
2408 Checking inodes (sizes)...
2409 Checking extended attributes (names)...
2410 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
2411 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
2412 Checking directory reachability...
2413 Checking unix conventions...
2414 Checking referential integrity...
2415 Dropping temporary indices...
2416 Backing up old metadata...
2417 Dumping metadata...
2418 ..objects..
2419 ..blocks..
2420 ..inodes..
2421 ..inode_blocks..
2422 ..symlink_targets..
2423 ..names..
2424 ..contents..
2425 ..ext_attributes..
2426 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2427 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
2428 #
2429 </pre></blockquote></p>
2430
2431 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
2432 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
2433 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
2434 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
2435 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
2436 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
2437 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
2438 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
2439 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
2440 working set.</p>
2441
2442 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
2443 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
2444 busy:</p>
2445
2446 <p><blockquote><pre>
2447 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2448   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2449 Using 8 upload threads.
2450 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
2451 #
2452 </pre></blockquote></p>
2453
2454 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
2455 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
2456 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
2457 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
2458 s3qlctrl:
2459
2460 <p><blockquote><pre>
2461 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
2462 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
2463 #
2464 </pre></blockquote></p>
2465
2466 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
2467 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
2468 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
2469 a report:</p>
2470
2471 <p><blockquote><pre>
2472 # s3qlstat /s3ql
2473 Directory entries:    9141
2474 Inodes:               9143
2475 Data blocks:          8851
2476 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
2477 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
2478 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
2479 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
2480 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
2481 #
2482 </pre></blockquote></p>
2483
2484 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
2485 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
2486 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
2487 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
2488 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
2489 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
2490 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
2491 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
2492 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
2493 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
2494 best.</p>
2495
2496 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
2497 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
2498 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
2499 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
2500 poster is titled
2501 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
2502 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
2503 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
2504 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
2505 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
2506
2507 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
2508 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
2509 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
2510 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
2511 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
2512 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
2513 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
2514 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
2515
2516 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
2517 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
2518 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
2519 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
2520 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
2521 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
2522 only read from it.</p>
2523
2524 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2525 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2526 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2527
2528       </div>
2529       <div class="tags">
2530
2531
2532         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2533
2534
2535       </div>
2536     </div>
2537     <div class="padding"></div>
2538
2539     <div class="entry">
2540       <div class="title">
2541         <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>
2542       </div>
2543       <div class="date">
2544         14th March 2014
2545       </div>
2546       <div class="body">
2547         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2548 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
2549 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
2550 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
2551 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
2552 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
2553 release (0.2).</p>
2554
2555 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
2556 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
2557 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
2558 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
2559 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
2560 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
2561 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
2562 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
2563 and build using
2564 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
2565 with a user with sudo access to become root:
2566
2567 <pre>
2568 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2569   freedom-maker
2570 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2571   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2572   u-boot-tools
2573 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2574 </pre>
2575
2576 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2577 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
2578 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
2579 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
2580 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
2581 kpartx call.</p>
2582
2583 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2584 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2585 the preseed values:</p>
2586
2587 <pre>
2588 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2589 </pre>
2590
2591 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
2592 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
2593 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
2594 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
2595 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
2596 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
2597
2598 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2599 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2600 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2601 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2602 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2603 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2604
2605       </div>
2606       <div class="tags">
2607
2608
2609         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>.
2610
2611
2612       </div>
2613     </div>
2614     <div class="padding"></div>
2615
2616     <div class="entry">
2617       <div class="title">
2618         <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>
2619       </div>
2620       <div class="date">
2621         22nd February 2014
2622       </div>
2623       <div class="body">
2624         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
2625 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
2626 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
2627 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
2628 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
2629 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
2630 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
2631 proper home since then.</p>
2632
2633 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
2634 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
2635 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
2636 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
2637 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
2638
2639 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
2640 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
2641 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
2642 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
2643 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
2644 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
2645 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
2646 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
2647 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
2648
2649       </div>
2650       <div class="tags">
2651
2652
2653         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>.
2654
2655
2656       </div>
2657     </div>
2658     <div class="padding"></div>
2659
2660     <div class="entry">
2661       <div class="title">
2662         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
2663       </div>
2664       <div class="date">
2665          3rd February 2014
2666       </div>
2667       <div class="body">
2668         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
2669 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
2670 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
2671 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
2672 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
2673 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
2674 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
2675 <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>,
2676 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
2677
2678 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
2679 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
2680 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
2681 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
2682 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
2683 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
2684
2685 <p><blockquote><pre>
2686 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
2687 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
2688 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
2689 dhclient /dev/eth0
2690 </pre></blockquote></p>
2691
2692 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
2693 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
2694 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
2695
2696 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
2697 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
2698 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
2699 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
2700 side.</p>
2701
2702 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
2703 stuff:</p>
2704
2705 <p><blockquote><pre>
2706 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2707 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
2708 EOF
2709 apt-get update
2710 apt-get dist-upgrade
2711 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
2712     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
2713 update-alternatives --config runsystem
2714 </pre></blockquote></p>
2715
2716 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
2717 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
2718 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
2719 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
2720 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
2721 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
2722 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
2723 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
2724 ssh instead.
2725
2726 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
2727 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
2728 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
2729 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
2730 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
2731 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
2732
2733 <p><blockquote><pre>
2734 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2735 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
2736 EOF
2737 </pre></blockquote></p>
2738
2739 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
2740 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
2741 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
2742 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
2743
2744 <p><blockquote><pre>
2745 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
2746 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
2747 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
2748 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
2749 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
2750 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
2751 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
2752 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
2753 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
2754 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
2755 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
2756 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
2757 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
2758 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
2759 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
2760 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
2761 #
2762 </pre></blockquote></p>
2763
2764 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
2765 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
2766 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
2767 command line stuff.<p>
2768
2769       </div>
2770       <div class="tags">
2771
2772
2773         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>.
2774
2775
2776       </div>
2777     </div>
2778     <div class="padding"></div>
2779
2780     <div class="entry">
2781       <div class="title">
2782         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
2783       </div>
2784       <div class="date">
2785         14th January 2014
2786       </div>
2787       <div class="body">
2788         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
2789 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
2790 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
2791 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
2792 the source.  The company behind it provide
2793 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
2794 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
2795 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
2796 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
2797 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
2798 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
2799 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
2800 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
2801 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
2802 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
2803 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
2804 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
2805 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
2806 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
2807 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
2808 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
2809 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
2810 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
2811 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
2812
2813 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
2814
2815 <ul>
2816
2817   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
2818   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
2819   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
2820
2821 </ul>
2822
2823 <p>You can
2824 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2825 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2826 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2827 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2828 include a test suite check.</p>
2829
2830       </div>
2831       <div class="tags">
2832
2833
2834         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>.
2835
2836
2837       </div>
2838     </div>
2839     <div class="padding"></div>
2840
2841     <div class="entry">
2842       <div class="title">
2843         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
2844       </div>
2845       <div class="date">
2846         24th November 2013
2847       </div>
2848       <div class="body">
2849         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
2850 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
2851 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
2852 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
2853 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
2854 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
2855 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
2856 is working on.  I checked the
2857 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
2858 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
2859 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
2860 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
2861 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
2862 These are the release notes:</p>
2863
2864 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
2865
2866 <ul>
2867
2868   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
2869    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
2870    up.</li>
2871
2872   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
2873
2874   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
2875    Matthias Klose.</li>
2876
2877   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
2878    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
2879
2880   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
2881    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
2882    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
2883
2884 </ul>
2885
2886 <p>You can
2887 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2888 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
2889 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
2890 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2891 include a testsuite check.</p>
2892
2893       </div>
2894       <div class="tags">
2895
2896
2897         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>.
2898
2899
2900       </div>
2901     </div>
2902     <div class="padding"></div>
2903
2904     <div class="entry">
2905       <div class="title">
2906         <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>
2907       </div>
2908       <div class="date">
2909          2nd November 2013
2910       </div>
2911       <div class="body">
2912         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
2913 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
2914 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
2915 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
2916 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
2917
2918 <p><pre>
2919 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
2920 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
2921 # Provides:          rsyslog
2922 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
2923 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
2924 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
2925 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
2926 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
2927 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
2928 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
2929 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
2930 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
2931 ### END INIT INFO
2932 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
2933 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
2934 </pre></p>
2935
2936 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
2937 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
2938 info/comments.</p>
2939
2940 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
2941 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
2942
2943 <p><pre>
2944 #!/bin/sh
2945
2946 # Define LSB log_* functions.
2947 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
2948 # and status_of_proc is working.
2949 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
2950
2951 #
2952 # Function that starts the daemon/service
2953
2954 #
2955 do_start()
2956 {
2957         # Return
2958         #   0 if daemon has been started
2959         #   1 if daemon was already running
2960         #   2 if daemon could not be started
2961         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
2962                 || return 1
2963         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
2964                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
2965                 || return 2
2966         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
2967         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
2968         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
2969 }
2970
2971 #
2972 # Function that stops the daemon/service
2973 #
2974 do_stop()
2975 {
2976         # Return
2977         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
2978         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
2979         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
2980         #   other if a failure occurred
2981         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
2982         RETVAL="$?"
2983         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
2984         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
2985         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
2986         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
2987         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
2988         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
2989         # sleep for some time.
2990         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
2991         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
2992         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
2993         rm -f $PIDFILE
2994         return "$RETVAL"
2995 }
2996
2997 #
2998 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
2999 #
3000 do_reload() {
3001         #
3002         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
3003         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
3004         # then implement that here.
3005         #
3006         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3007         return 0
3008 }
3009
3010 SCRIPTNAME=$1
3011 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
3012 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
3013 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
3014     script="$1"
3015     shift
3016     . $script
3017 else
3018     exit 0
3019 fi
3020
3021 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
3022 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
3023
3024 # Exit if the package is not installed
3025 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
3026
3027 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
3028 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
3029
3030 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
3031 . /lib/init/vars.sh
3032
3033 case "$1" in
3034   start)
3035         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
3036         do_start
3037         case "$?" in
3038                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3039                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3040         esac
3041         ;;
3042   stop)
3043         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
3044         do_stop
3045         case "$?" in
3046                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3047                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3048         esac
3049         ;;
3050   status)
3051         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
3052         ;;
3053   #reload|force-reload)
3054         #
3055         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
3056         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
3057         #
3058         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
3059         #do_reload
3060         #log_end_msg $?
3061         #;;
3062   restart|force-reload)
3063         #
3064         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
3065         # 'force-reload' alias
3066         #
3067         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
3068         do_stop
3069         case "$?" in
3070           0|1)
3071                 do_start
3072                 case "$?" in
3073                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
3074                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
3075                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
3076                 esac
3077                 ;;
3078           *)
3079                 # Failed to stop
3080                 log_end_msg 1
3081                 ;;
3082         esac
3083         ;;
3084   *)
3085         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
3086         exit 3
3087         ;;
3088 esac
3089
3090 :
3091 </pre></p>
3092
3093 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
3094 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
3095 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
3096 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
3097
3098 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
3099 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
3100 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
3101 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
3102 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
3103
3104       </div>
3105       <div class="tags">
3106
3107
3108         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>.
3109
3110
3111       </div>
3112     </div>
3113     <div class="padding"></div>
3114
3115     <div class="entry">
3116       <div class="title">
3117         <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>
3118       </div>
3119       <div class="date">
3120          1st November 2013
3121       </div>
3122       <div class="body">
3123         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
3124 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
3125 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
3126 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
3127 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
3128 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
3129 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
3130 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
3131 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
3132 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
3133 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
3134 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
3135
3136 <p>The source is now available from
3137 <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>
3138
3139       </div>
3140       <div class="tags">
3141
3142
3143         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>.
3144
3145
3146       </div>
3147     </div>
3148     <div class="padding"></div>
3149
3150     <div class="entry">
3151       <div class="title">
3152         <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>
3153       </div>
3154       <div class="date">
3155         27th October 2013
3156       </div>
3157       <div class="body">
3158         <p>The
3159 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
3160 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
3161 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
3162 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
3163 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
3164 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
3165 of a plan to simplify the build system for
3166 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
3167 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
3168 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
3169 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
3170 Raspberry Pi.</p>
3171
3172 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
3173 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
3174 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
3175 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
3176 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
3177 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
3178 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
3179 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
3180 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
3181 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
3182 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
3183 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
3184 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
3185 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
3186 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
3187 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
3188 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
3189 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
3190 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
3191 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
3192 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
3193 available from
3194 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
3195 upstream project page</a>.</p>
3196
3197 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
3198 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
3199 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
3200 list:</p>
3201
3202 <p><pre>
3203 #!/bin/sh
3204 set -e # Exit on first error
3205 rootdir="$1"
3206 cd "$rootdir"
3207 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
3208 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
3209 EOF
3210 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
3211 # install a kernel somewhere too.
3212 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
3213     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3214 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3215 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
3216 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
3217 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
3218 </pre></p>
3219
3220 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
3221 to build the image:</p>
3222
3223 <pre>
3224 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
3225     --variant minbase \
3226     --arch armel \
3227     --distribution jessie \
3228     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
3229     --image test.img \
3230     --size 600M \
3231     --bootsize 64M \
3232     --boottype vfat \
3233     --log-level debug \
3234     --verbose \
3235     --no-kernel \
3236     --no-extlinux \
3237     --root-password raspberry \
3238     --hostname raspberrypi \
3239     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
3240     --customize `pwd`/customize \
3241     --package netbase \
3242     --package git-core \
3243     --package binutils \
3244     --package ca-certificates \
3245     --package wget \
3246     --package kmod
3247 </pre></p>
3248
3249 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
3250 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
3251 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
3252 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
3253 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
3254 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
3255 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
3256
3257 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
3258 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
3259 build dependency list.</p>
3260
3261 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
3262 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
3263 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
3264 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
3265
3266       </div>
3267       <div class="tags">
3268
3269
3270         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>.
3271
3272
3273       </div>
3274     </div>
3275     <div class="padding"></div>
3276
3277     <div class="entry">
3278       <div class="title">
3279         <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>
3280       </div>
3281       <div class="date">
3282         15th October 2013
3283       </div>
3284       <div class="body">
3285         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
3286 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
3287 these. :)</p>
3288
3289 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
3290 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
3291 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
3292 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
3293 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
3294 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
3295 hope you will to. :)</p>
3296
3297 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
3298 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
3299 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
3300 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
3301 donated.  Are you next?</p>
3302
3303 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
3304 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
3305 statement under the heading
3306 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
3307 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
3308 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
3309 too.</p>
3310
3311       </div>
3312       <div class="tags">
3313
3314
3315         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3316
3317
3318       </div>
3319     </div>
3320     <div class="padding"></div>
3321
3322     <div class="entry">
3323       <div class="title">
3324         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
3325       </div>
3326       <div class="date">
3327         27th September 2013
3328       </div>
3329       <div class="body">
3330         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
3331 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
3332 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
3333 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
3334
3335 <ul>
3336
3337 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
3338 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
3339
3340 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
3341 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3342
3343 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
3344 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
3345 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
3346 (Youtube)</li>
3347
3348 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
3349 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
3350
3351 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
3352 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3353
3354 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
3355 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
3356 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
3357
3358 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
3359 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
3360 (Youtube)</li>
3361
3362 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
3363 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
3364
3365 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
3366 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
3367
3368 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
3369 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
3370 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
3371
3372 </ul>
3373
3374 <p>A larger list is available from
3375 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
3376 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
3377
3378 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
3379 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
3380 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
3381 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
3382 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
3383 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
3384 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
3385 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
3386 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
3387 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3388 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3389
3390       </div>
3391       <div class="tags">
3392
3393
3394         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>.
3395
3396
3397       </div>
3398     </div>
3399     <div class="padding"></div>
3400
3401     <div class="entry">
3402       <div class="title">
3403         <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>
3404       </div>
3405       <div class="date">
3406         10th September 2013
3407       </div>
3408       <div class="body">
3409         <p>I was introduced to the
3410 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
3411 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
3412 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
3413 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
3414 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
3415 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
3416 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
3417 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
3418
3419 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
3420 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
3421 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
3422 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
3423 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
3424
3425 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
3426 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
3427 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
3428 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
3429 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
3430 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
3431 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
3432 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
3433 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
3434 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
3435 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
3436 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
3437 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
3438 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
3439 missing in Debian).</p>
3440
3441 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
3442 scripts
3443 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
3444 and a administrative web interface
3445 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
3446 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
3447 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
3448 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
3449 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
3450 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
3451 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
3452 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
3453 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
3454 this is really working yet, see
3455 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
3456 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
3457 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
3458 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
3459 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
3460 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
3461 with lots of half baked features.</p>
3462
3463 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
3464 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
3465 at.</p>
3466
3467 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
3468
3469 <ol>
3470
3471 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
3472 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
3473 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
3474 to the Debian installer:<p>
3475 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
3476
3477 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
3478 install on.</li>
3479
3480 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
3481 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
3482
3483 </ol>
3484
3485 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
3486
3487 <ol>
3488
3489 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
3490 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
3491 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
3492 <pre>
3493 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
3494 </pre></li>
3495 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
3496 <pre>
3497 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
3498    apt-key add -
3499 apt-get update
3500 apt-get install freedombox-setup
3501 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
3502 </pre></li>
3503 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
3504
3505 </ol>
3506
3507 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
3508 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
3509 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
3510 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
3511 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
3512
3513 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
3514 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
3515 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
3516 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
3517
3518 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
3519 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
3520 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
3521 irc.debian.org and the
3522 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
3523 mailing list</a>.</p>
3524
3525 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
3526 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
3527 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
3528 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
3529 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
3530 default password is 'secret'.</p>
3531
3532       </div>
3533       <div class="tags">
3534
3535
3536         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>.
3537
3538
3539       </div>
3540     </div>
3541     <div class="padding"></div>
3542
3543     <div class="entry">
3544       <div class="title">
3545         <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>
3546       </div>
3547       <div class="date">
3548         18th August 2013
3549       </div>
3550       <div class="body">
3551         <p>Earlier, I reported about
3552 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
3553 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
3554 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
3555 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
3556 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
3557 currently on the disk.</p>
3558
3559 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
3560 <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>
3561 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
3562 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
3563 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
3564 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
3565 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
3566 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
3567 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
3568 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
3569 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
3570 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
3571 the broken disks.</p>
3572
3573       </div>
3574       <div class="tags">
3575
3576
3577         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>.
3578
3579
3580       </div>
3581     </div>
3582     <div class="padding"></div>
3583
3584     <div class="entry">
3585       <div class="title">
3586         <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>
3587       </div>
3588       <div class="date">
3589         17th July 2013
3590       </div>
3591       <div class="body">
3592         <p>Today I switched to
3593 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
3594 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
3595 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
3596 <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
3597 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
3598 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
3599 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
3600 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
3601 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
3602 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
3603 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
3604 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
3605 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
3606 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
3607 station from now on.</p>
3608
3609 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
3610 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
3611 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
3612 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
3613 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
3614 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
3615 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
3616 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
3617 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
3618 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
3619 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
3620 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
3621
3622 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
3623 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
3624 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
3625 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
3626 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
3627 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
3628 parameters are tuned:</p>
3629
3630 <ul>
3631
3632 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
3633     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
3634
3635 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
3636     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
3637     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
3638
3639 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
3640     systems.</li>
3641
3642 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
3643     /etc/fstab.</li>
3644
3645 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
3646
3647 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
3648     cron.daily).</li>
3649
3650 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
3651     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
3652
3653 </ul>
3654
3655 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
3656 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
3657 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
3658 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
3659 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
3660 from getting the data on the disk (see
3661 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
3662 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
3663 right thing to do.</p>
3664
3665 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
3666 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
3667 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
3668
3669 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
3670 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
3671 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
3672 instead of during my work.</p>
3673
3674 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
3675 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
3676
3677 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
3678 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
3679 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
3680
3681 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
3682 there.</p>
3683
3684 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
3685 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
3686 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
3687 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
3688 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
3689 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
3690 back.</p>
3691
3692       </div>
3693       <div class="tags">
3694
3695
3696         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>.
3697
3698
3699       </div>
3700     </div>
3701     <div class="padding"></div>
3702
3703     <div class="entry">
3704       <div class="title">
3705         <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>
3706       </div>
3707       <div class="date">
3708         10th July 2013
3709       </div>
3710       <div class="body">
3711         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
3712 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
3713 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
3714 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
3715 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
3716 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
3717 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
3718 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
3719
3720 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
3721 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
3722 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
3723 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
3724 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
3725 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
3726 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
3727 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
3728 lock up when I download a new
3729 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
3730 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
3731 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
3732
3733 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3734 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
3735 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3736 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
3737 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3738 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3739
3740 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3741 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
3742 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3743 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
3744 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3745 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3746
3747 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
3748 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
3749 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
3750 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
3751 exist).</p>
3752
3753       </div>
3754       <div class="tags">
3755
3756
3757         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>.
3758
3759
3760       </div>
3761     </div>
3762     <div class="padding"></div>
3763
3764     <div class="entry">
3765       <div class="title">
3766         <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>
3767       </div>
3768       <div class="date">
3769          9th July 2013
3770       </div>
3771       <div class="body">
3772         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
3773 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
3774 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
3775 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
3776 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3777 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
3778 Bitraf</a>.</p>
3779
3780 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
3781 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
3782 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
3783 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
3784 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
3785
3786       </div>
3787       <div class="tags">
3788
3789
3790         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>.
3791
3792
3793       </div>
3794     </div>
3795     <div class="padding"></div>
3796
3797     <div class="entry">
3798       <div class="title">
3799         <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>
3800       </div>
3801       <div class="date">
3802          5th July 2013
3803       </div>
3804       <div class="body">
3805         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
3806 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
3807 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
3808 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
3809 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
3810 ended up picking a
3811 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
3812 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
3813 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
3814 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
3815 on that below.</p>
3816
3817 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3818 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3819 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3820 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3821 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3822 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
3823 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
3824 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
3825 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
3826
3827 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
3828 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
3829 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
3830 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
3831 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
3832 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
3833 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
3834
3835 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
3836 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
3837
3838 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
3839 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
3840 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
3841 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
3842 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
3843 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
3844 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
3845 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
3846 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
3847 kernel developers as
3848 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
3849 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
3850 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
3851 Lenovo forums, both for
3852 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
3853 2012-11-10</a> and for
3854 <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
3855 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
3856 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
3857 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
3858 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
3859 There is even a
3860 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
3861 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
3862 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
3863
3864 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
3865 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
3866 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
3867 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
3868 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
3869 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
3870 fixed. :)</p>
3871
3872       </div>
3873       <div class="tags">
3874
3875
3876         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>.
3877
3878
3879       </div>
3880     </div>
3881     <div class="padding"></div>
3882
3883     <div class="entry">
3884       <div class="title">
3885         <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>
3886       </div>
3887       <div class="date">
3888          4th July 2013
3889       </div>
3890       <div class="body">
3891         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
3892 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
3893 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
3894 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
3895 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
3896 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
3897 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
3898 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
3899 with an expencive door stop.</p>
3900
3901 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
3902 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
3903 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
3904 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
3905 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
3906 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
3907 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
3908
3909 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
3910 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
3911 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
3912 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
3913 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
3914 new laptop now. :)</p>
3915
3916 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
3917
3918       </div>
3919       <div class="tags">
3920
3921
3922         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>.
3923
3924
3925       </div>
3926     </div>
3927     <div class="padding"></div>
3928
3929     <div class="entry">
3930       <div class="title">
3931         <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>
3932       </div>
3933       <div class="date">
3934         25th June 2013
3935       </div>
3936       <div class="body">
3937         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
3938 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
3939 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
3940 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
3941 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
3942 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
3943 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
3944 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
3945 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
3946 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
3947 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
3948
3949 <p><pre>
3950 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3951 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
3952 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
3953 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
3954 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
3955 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
3956 firmware-ipw2x00
3957 firmware-ipw2x00
3958 Preconfiguring packages ...
3959 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
3960 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
3961 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
3962 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
3963 #
3964 </pre></p>
3965
3966 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
3967 printed instead:</p>
3968
3969 <p><pre>
3970 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
3971 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
3972 #
3973 </pre></p>
3974
3975 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
3976 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
3977
3978 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
3979 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
3980 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
3981 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
3982 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
3983 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
3984 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
3985 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
3986 machine.</p>
3987
3988 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
3989 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
3990 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
3991 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
3992 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
3993 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
3994
3995       </div>
3996       <div class="tags">
3997
3998
3999         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>.
4000
4001
4002       </div>
4003     </div>
4004     <div class="padding"></div>
4005
4006     <div class="entry">
4007       <div class="title">
4008         <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>
4009       </div>
4010       <div class="date">
4011         11th June 2013
4012       </div>
4013       <div class="body">
4014         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
4015 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
4016 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
4017 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
4018 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
4019 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
4020 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
4021 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
4022 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
4023 i915 driver used by the
4024 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4025 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
4026
4027 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
4028 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
4029 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
4030 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
4031 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
4032
4033 <pre>
4034 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
4035 update-initramfs -u -k all
4036 </pre>
4037
4038 <p>Since March 2012 there is
4039 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
4040 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
4041 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
4042 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
4043 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
4044 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
4045 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
4046 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
4047 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
4048 number.</p>
4049
4050 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
4051 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
4052
4053 <p><pre>
4054 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
4055     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
4056     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
4057  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
4058  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
4059     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
4060  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
4061     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
4062  Latency: 0
4063  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
4064  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
4065  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
4066  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
4067  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
4068  Capabilities: <access denied>
4069  Kernel driver in use: i915
4070 </pre></p>
4071
4072 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
4073
4074 <p><pre>
4075 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
4076        ...
4077         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
4078         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
4079        ...
4080 }
4081 </pre></p>
4082
4083 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
4084 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
4085 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
4086 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
4087 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
4088 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
4089 yet shown up in
4090 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
4091 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
4092 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
4093 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
4094 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
4095 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
4096
4097 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
4098 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
4099 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
4100 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
4101 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
4102 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
4103 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
4104 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
4105 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
4106 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
4107 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
4108 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
4109
4110 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
4111 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
4112 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
4113 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
4114 backlight.</p>
4115
4116       </div>
4117       <div class="tags">
4118
4119
4120         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>.
4121
4122
4123       </div>
4124     </div>
4125     <div class="padding"></div>
4126
4127     <div class="entry">
4128       <div class="title">
4129         <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>
4130       </div>
4131       <div class="date">
4132         27th May 2013
4133       </div>
4134       <div class="body">
4135         <p>Two days ago, I asked
4136 <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
4137 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
4138 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
4139 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
4140 and Windows 8.</p>
4141
4142 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
4143 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
4144 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
4145 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
4146 enough to tell.</p>
4147
4148 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
4149 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
4150 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
4151 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
4152 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
4153 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
4154 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
4155 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
4156 to follow.</p>
4157
4158 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
4159 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
4160 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
4161 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
4162 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
4163 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
4164 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
4165 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
4166
4167 <p>I've updated the
4168 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
4169 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
4170 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
4171 machine.</p>
4172
4173 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
4174 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
4175
4176       </div>
4177       <div class="tags">
4178
4179
4180         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>.
4181
4182
4183       </div>
4184     </div>
4185     <div class="padding"></div>
4186
4187     <div class="entry">
4188       <div class="title">
4189         <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>
4190       </div>
4191       <div class="date">
4192         25th May 2013
4193       </div>
4194       <div class="body">
4195         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
4196 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
4197 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
4198 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
4199 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
4200 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
4201
4202 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
4203 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
4204 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
4205 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
4206 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
4207 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
4208 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
4209 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
4210 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
4211 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
4212
4213 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
4214 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4215 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
4216 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
4217 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
4218 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
4219
4220 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
4221 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
4222 on new Laptops?</p>
4223
4224       </div>
4225       <div class="tags">
4226
4227
4228         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4229
4230
4231       </div>
4232     </div>
4233     <div class="padding"></div>
4234
4235     <div class="entry">
4236       <div class="title">
4237         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
4238       </div>
4239       <div class="date">
4240         17th May 2013
4241       </div>
4242       <div class="body">
4243         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
4244 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
4245 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
4246 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
4247 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
4248 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
4249 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
4250 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
4251 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
4252 donate some money</a>.
4253
4254 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
4255 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
4256 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
4257 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
4258 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
4259
4260 <p>The script,
4261 <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/>
4262 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
4263 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
4264 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
4265
4266 <ol>
4267
4268 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
4269 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
4270 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
4271     our configuration.</li>
4272 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
4273     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
4274     according to the profile specified in the config above,
4275     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
4276 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
4277     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
4278 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
4279
4280 </ol>
4281
4282 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
4283 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
4284 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
4285 the needed packages.</p>
4286
4287 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
4288 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
4289 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
4290 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
4291 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
4292 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
4293
4294 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
4295 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
4296 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
4297
4298 <p><pre>
4299 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
4300 DESKTOP="lxde"
4301 </pre></p>
4302
4303 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
4304 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
4305 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
4306 boot.</p>
4307
4308       </div>
4309       <div class="tags">
4310
4311
4312         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>.
4313
4314
4315       </div>
4316     </div>
4317     <div class="padding"></div>
4318
4319     <div class="entry">
4320       <div class="title">
4321         <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>
4322       </div>
4323       <div class="date">
4324         11th May 2013
4325       </div>
4326       <div class="body">
4327         <P>In January,
4328 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
4329 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
4330 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
4331 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
4332 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
4333 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
4334 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
4335 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
4336 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
4337 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
4338 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
4339 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
4340
4341 <p><table>
4342 <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>
4343 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
4344 <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>
4345 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
4346 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
4347 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
4348 <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>
4349 <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>
4350 <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>
4351 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
4352 </table></p>
4353
4354 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
4355 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
4356 available in experimental.</p>
4357
4358 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
4359 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
4360 for LEGO designers.</p>
4361
4362       </div>
4363       <div class="tags">
4364
4365
4366         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>.
4367
4368
4369       </div>
4370     </div>
4371     <div class="padding"></div>
4372
4373     <div class="entry">
4374       <div class="title">
4375         <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>
4376       </div>
4377       <div class="date">
4378          5th May 2013
4379       </div>
4380       <div class="body">
4381         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
4382 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
4383 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
4384 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
4385 soon.</p>
4386
4387 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
4388 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
4389 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
4390 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
4391 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
4392 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
4393 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
4394 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
4395 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
4396 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
4397 Edu.</a>
4398
4399 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
4400 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
4401 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
4402 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
4403 follow.<p>
4404
4405       </div>
4406       <div class="tags">
4407
4408
4409         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>.
4410
4411
4412       </div>
4413     </div>
4414     <div class="padding"></div>
4415
4416     <div class="entry">
4417       <div class="title">
4418         <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>
4419       </div>
4420       <div class="date">
4421          3rd April 2013
4422       </div>
4423       <div class="body">
4424         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
4425 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
4426 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
4427 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
4428
4429 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
4430 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
4431 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
4432 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
4433 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
4434 BTS. :)</p>
4435
4436       </div>
4437       <div class="tags">
4438
4439
4440         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>.
4441
4442
4443       </div>
4444     </div>
4445     <div class="padding"></div>
4446
4447     <div class="entry">
4448       <div class="title">
4449         <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>
4450       </div>
4451       <div class="date">
4452          2nd February 2013
4453       </div>
4454       <div class="body">
4455         <p>My
4456 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
4457 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
4458 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
4459 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
4460 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
4461 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
4462 version too.</p>
4463
4464 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
4465 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
4466 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
4467 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
4468 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
4469 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
4470 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
4471 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
4472
4473 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
4474 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
4475 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
4476 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
4477 it. :)</p>
4478
4479 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4480 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4481 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4482
4483       </div>
4484       <div class="tags">
4485
4486
4487         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>.
4488
4489
4490       </div>
4491     </div>
4492     <div class="padding"></div>
4493
4494     <div class="entry">
4495       <div class="title">
4496         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
4497       </div>
4498       <div class="date">
4499         22nd January 2013
4500       </div>
4501       <div class="body">
4502         <p>Yesterday, I
4503 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
4504 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
4505 pluggable hardware devices, which I
4506 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
4507 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
4508 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
4509 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
4510 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
4511 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
4512 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
4513 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
4514 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
4515 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
4516
4517 <pre>
4518 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
4519 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
4520 </pre>
4521
4522 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
4523 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
4524 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
4525 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
4526
4527 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
4528 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
4529 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
4530 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
4531 word.</p>
4532
4533 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
4534 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
4535 process.</p>
4536
4537 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
4538 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
4539
4540       </div>
4541       <div class="tags">
4542
4543
4544         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>.
4545
4546
4547       </div>
4548     </div>
4549     <div class="padding"></div>
4550
4551     <div class="entry">
4552       <div class="title">
4553         <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>
4554       </div>
4555       <div class="date">
4556         21st January 2013
4557       </div>
4558       <div class="body">
4559         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
4560 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
4561 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
4562 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
4563 it, fetch the
4564 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
4565 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
4566 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
4567 autostart script.</p>
4568
4569 <p>The design is simple:</p>
4570
4571 <ul>
4572
4573 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
4574 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
4575
4576 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
4577 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
4578 initially did.</li>
4579
4580 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
4581 the APT database, a database
4582 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
4583 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
4584
4585 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
4586 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
4587 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
4588 package or packages.</li>
4589
4590 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
4591 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
4592
4593 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
4594 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
4595
4596 </ul>
4597
4598 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
4599 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
4600 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
4601 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
4602
4603 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
4604 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
4605 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
4606 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
4607 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
4608
4609 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
4610 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
4611 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
4612 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
4613 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
4614 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
4615 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
4616 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
4617
4618 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
4619 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
4620 '<tt>svn checkout
4621 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
4622 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
4623 devscripts package.</p>
4624
4625 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
4626 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
4627 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
4628 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
4629 instructions</a> for details.</p>
4630
4631       </div>
4632       <div class="tags">
4633
4634
4635         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>.
4636
4637
4638       </div>
4639     </div>
4640     <div class="padding"></div>
4641
4642     <div class="entry">
4643       <div class="title">
4644         <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>
4645       </div>
4646       <div class="date">
4647         19th January 2013
4648       </div>
4649       <div class="body">
4650         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
4651 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
4652 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
4653 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
4654 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
4655 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
4656 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
4657 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
4658 not a durable solution.
4659
4660 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
4661 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
4662
4663 <ul>
4664
4665 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
4666   than A4).</li>
4667 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
4668 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
4669 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
4670 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
4671 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
4672 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
4673 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
4674 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
4675 size).</li>
4676 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
4677   X.org packages.</li>
4678 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
4679   the time).
4680
4681 </ul>
4682
4683 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
4684 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
4685 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
4686 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
4687 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
4688 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
4689 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
4690 still be useful.</p>
4691
4692 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
4693 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
4694 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
4695 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
4696 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
4697 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
4698
4699       </div>
4700       <div class="tags">
4701
4702
4703         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>.
4704
4705
4706       </div>
4707     </div>
4708     <div class="padding"></div>
4709
4710     <div class="entry">
4711       <div class="title">
4712         <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>
4713       </div>
4714       <div class="date">
4715         18th January 2013
4716       </div>
4717       <div class="body">
4718         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
4719 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
4720 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
4721 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
4722 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
4723 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
4724 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
4725
4726 <pre>
4727 #!/usr/bin/python
4728 import sys
4729 import apt
4730 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4731     cache = apt.Cache()
4732     cache.open(None)
4733     thepkgs = []
4734     for pkg in cache:
4735         version = pkg.candidate
4736         if version is None:
4737             version = pkg.installed
4738         if version is None:
4739             continue
4740         record = version.record
4741         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
4742             continue
4743         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
4744         for t in mime_types:
4745             t = t.rstrip().strip()
4746             if t == mimetype:
4747                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
4748     return thepkgs
4749 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
4750 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
4751     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
4752 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
4753 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4754     print "  %s" %pkg
4755 </pre>
4756
4757 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
4758
4759 <pre>
4760 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
4761 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
4762   gecko-mediaplayer
4763 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
4764 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
4765   browser-plugin-gnash
4766 %
4767 </pre>
4768
4769 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
4770 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
4771 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
4772 anyone working on adding it?</p>
4773
4774 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
4775 request for icweasel support for this feature is
4776 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
4777 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
4778 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
4779 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
4780
4781       </div>
4782       <div class="tags">
4783
4784
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>.
4786
4787
4788       </div>
4789     </div>
4790     <div class="padding"></div>
4791
4792     <div class="entry">
4793       <div class="title">
4794         <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>
4795       </div>
4796       <div class="date">
4797         16th January 2013
4798       </div>
4799       <div class="body">
4800         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
4801 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
4802 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
4803 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
4804 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
4805 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
4806 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
4807 downloaded by the browser.</p>
4808
4809 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
4810 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
4811 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
4812 can be found on the
4813 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
4814 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
4815 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
4816 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
4817 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
4818
4819 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
4820
4821 <pre>
4822   count MIME type
4823   ----- -----------------------
4824      32 text/plain
4825      30 audio/mpeg
4826      29 image/png
4827      28 image/jpeg
4828      27 application/ogg
4829      26 audio/x-mp3
4830      25 image/tiff
4831      25 image/gif
4832      22 image/bmp
4833      22 audio/x-wav
4834      20 audio/x-flac
4835      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4836      18 video/x-ms-asf
4837      18 audio/x-musepack
4838      18 audio/x-mpeg
4839      18 application/x-ogg
4840      17 video/mpeg
4841      17 audio/x-scpls
4842      17 audio/ogg
4843      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4844 </pre>
4845
4846 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
4847
4848 <pre>
4849   count MIME type
4850   ----- -----------------------
4851      33 text/plain
4852      32 image/png
4853      32 image/jpeg
4854      29 audio/mpeg
4855      27 image/gif
4856      26 image/tiff
4857      26 application/ogg
4858      25 audio/x-mp3
4859      22 image/bmp
4860      21 audio/x-wav
4861      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4862      19 audio/x-mpeg
4863      18 video/mpeg
4864      18 audio/x-scpls
4865      18 audio/x-flac
4866      18 application/x-ogg
4867      17 video/x-ms-asf
4868      17 text/html
4869      17 audio/x-musepack
4870      16 image/x-xbitmap
4871 </pre>
4872
4873 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
4874
4875 <pre>
4876   count MIME type
4877   ----- -----------------------
4878      31 text/plain
4879      31 image/png
4880      31 image/jpeg
4881      29 audio/mpeg
4882      28 application/ogg
4883      27 image/gif
4884      26 image/tiff
4885      26 audio/x-mp3
4886      23 audio/x-wav
4887      22 image/bmp
4888      21 audio/x-flac
4889      20 audio/x-mpegurl
4890      19 audio/x-mpeg
4891      18 video/x-ms-asf
4892      18 video/mpeg
4893      18 audio/x-scpls
4894      18 application/x-ogg
4895      17 audio/x-musepack
4896      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4897      16 video/x-msvideo
4898 </pre>
4899
4900 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
4901 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
4902 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
4903 issues.</p>
4904
4905 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
4906 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
4907
4908       </div>
4909       <div class="tags">
4910
4911
4912         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>.
4913
4914
4915       </div>
4916     </div>
4917     <div class="padding"></div>
4918
4919     <div class="entry">
4920       <div class="title">
4921         <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>
4922       </div>
4923       <div class="date">
4924         15th January 2013
4925       </div>
4926       <div class="body">
4927         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
4928 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
4929 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
4930 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
4931 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
4932 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
4933 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
4934 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
4935 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
4936 packages.</p>
4937
4938 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
4939 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
4940 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
4941 modalias.</p>
4942
4943 <p><blockquote>
4944 Package: package-name
4945 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
4946 </blockquote></p>
4947
4948 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
4949 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
4950
4951 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
4952 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
4953
4954 <p><blockquote>
4955 Package: cheese
4956 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
4957 </blockquote></p>
4958
4959 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
4960 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
4961
4962 <p><blockquote>
4963 Package: pcmciautils
4964 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
4965 </blockquote></p>
4966
4967 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
4968 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
4969
4970 <p><blockquote>
4971 Package: colorhug-client
4972 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
4973 </blockquote></p>
4974
4975 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
4976 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
4977 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
4978
4979 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
4980 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
4981 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
4982 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
4983 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
4984 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
4985 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
4986 Raring.</p>
4987
4988 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
4989 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
4990 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
4991 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
4992 try the
4993 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
4994 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
4995 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
4996 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
4997
4998 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
4999 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
5000
5001 <p><blockquote>
5002 % ./hw-support-lookup
5003 <br>yubikey-personalization
5004 <br>%
5005 </blockquote></p>
5006
5007 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
5008 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
5009
5010 <p><blockquote>
5011 % ./hw-support-lookup
5012 <br>pcmciautils
5013 <br>%
5014 </blockquote></p>
5015
5016 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
5017 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
5018 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
5019
5020 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
5021 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
5022 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
5023 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
5024 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
5025 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
5026 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
5027 see if it work.</p>
5028
5029 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5030 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5031 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5032 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5033
5034       </div>
5035       <div class="tags">
5036
5037
5038         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>.
5039
5040
5041       </div>
5042     </div>
5043     <div class="padding"></div>
5044
5045     <div class="entry">
5046       <div class="title">
5047         <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>
5048       </div>
5049       <div class="date">
5050         14th January 2013
5051       </div>
5052       <div class="body">
5053         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
5054 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
5055 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
5056 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
5057 in
5058 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5059 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
5060
5061 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
5062
5063 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
5064 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
5065 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
5066 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
5067 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
5068 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
5069
5070 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
5071 this shell script:</p>
5072
5073 <pre>
5074 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
5075 </pre>
5076
5077 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
5078 using modinfo:</p>
5079
5080 <pre>
5081 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
5082 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
5083 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
5084 %
5085 </pre>
5086
5087 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
5088
5089 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
5090 Bridge memory controller:</p>
5091
5092 <p><blockquote>
5093 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
5094 </blockquote></p>
5095
5096 <p>This represent these values:</p>
5097
5098 <pre>
5099  v   00008086  (vendor)
5100  d   00002770  (device)
5101  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
5102  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
5103  bc  06        (bus class)
5104  sc  00        (bus subclass)
5105  i   00        (interface)
5106 </pre>
5107
5108 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
5109 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
5110 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
5111 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
5112
5113 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
5114 means.</p>
5115
5116 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
5117
5118 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
5119 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
5120
5121 <p><blockquote>
5122 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
5123 </blockquote></p>
5124
5125 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
5126
5127 <pre>
5128  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
5129  p    0001  (device product)
5130  d    0206  (bcddevice)
5131  dc     09  (device class)
5132  dsc    00  (device subclass)
5133  dp     00  (device protocol)
5134  ic     09  (interface class)
5135  isc    00  (interface subclass)
5136  ip     00  (interface protocol)
5137 </pre>
5138
5139 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
5140 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
5141 these alias entries show up:</p>
5142
5143 <p><blockquote>
5144 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
5145 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
5146 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
5147 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
5148 </blockquote></p>
5149
5150 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
5151 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
5152 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
5153
5154 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
5155
5156 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
5157 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
5158
5159 <p><blockquote>
5160 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5161 </blockquote></p>
5162
5163 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
5164
5165 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
5166
5167 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
5168 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
5169 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
5170
5171 <p><blockquote>
5172 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
5173 </blockquote></p>
5174
5175 <p>The values present are</p>
5176
5177 <pre>
5178  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
5179  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
5180  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
5181  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
5182  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
5183  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
5184  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
5185  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
5186  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
5187  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
5188  ct   10             (chassis type)
5189  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
5190 </pre>
5191
5192 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
5193 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
5194
5195 <pre>
5196   3 Desktop
5197   4 Low Profile Desktop
5198   5 Pizza Box
5199   6 Mini Tower
5200   7 Tower
5201   8 Portable
5202   9 Laptop
5203  10 Notebook
5204  11 Hand Held
5205  12 Docking Station
5206  13 All In One
5207  14 Sub Notebook
5208  15 Space-saving
5209  16 Lunch Box
5210  17 Main Server Chassis
5211  18 Expansion Chassis
5212  19 Sub Chassis
5213  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
5214  21 Peripheral Chassis
5215  22 RAID Chassis
5216  23 Rack Mount Chassis
5217  24 Sealed-case PC
5218  25 Multi-system
5219  26 CompactPCI
5220  27 AdvancedTCA
5221  28 Blade
5222  29 Blade Enclosing
5223 </pre>
5224
5225 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
5226 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
5227 claim it is a desktop.</p>
5228
5229 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
5230
5231 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
5232 test machine:</p>
5233
5234 <p><blockquote>
5235 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
5236 </blockquote></p>
5237
5238 <p>The values present are</p>
5239
5240 <pre>
5241   ty  01  (type)
5242   pr  00  (prototype)
5243   id  00  (id)
5244   ex  00  (extra)
5245 </pre>
5246
5247 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
5248 the valid values are.</p>
5249
5250 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
5251
5252 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
5253 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
5254 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
5255 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
5256 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
5257 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
5258 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
5259
5260 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
5261
5262 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
5263 one can use the following shell script:</p>
5264
5265 <pre>
5266   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
5267     echo "$id" ; \
5268     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
5269   done
5270 </pre>
5271
5272 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
5273 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
5274
5275 <pre>
5276   acpi:ACPI0003:
5277     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
5278   acpi:device:
5279   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
5280   acpi:IBM0068:
5281     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
5282     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
5283     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
5284     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
5285   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5286     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
5287     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
5288     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
5289   [...]
5290 </pre>
5291
5292 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5293 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5294 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5295 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5296
5297 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
5298 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
5299 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
5300
5301       </div>
5302       <div class="tags">
5303
5304
5305         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>.
5306
5307
5308       </div>
5309     </div>
5310     <div class="padding"></div>
5311
5312     <div class="entry">
5313       <div class="title">
5314         <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>
5315       </div>
5316       <div class="date">
5317         10th January 2013
5318       </div>
5319       <div class="body">
5320         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
5321 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
5322 Launcher and updated the Debian package
5323 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
5324 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
5325 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
5326 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
5327 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
5328 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
5329 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
5330 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
5331 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
5332 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
5333 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
5334 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
5335 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
5336 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
5337 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
5338
5339       </div>
5340       <div class="tags">
5341
5342
5343         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>.
5344
5345
5346       </div>
5347     </div>
5348     <div class="padding"></div>
5349
5350     <div class="entry">
5351       <div class="title">
5352         <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>
5353       </div>
5354       <div class="date">
5355          9th January 2013
5356       </div>
5357       <div class="body">
5358         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
5359 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
5360 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
5361 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
5362 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
5363 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
5364 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
5365 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
5366 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
5367 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
5368 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
5369
5370 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
5371 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
5372 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
5373 simple:
5374
5375 <ul>
5376
5377 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
5378   starting when a user log in.</li>
5379
5380 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
5381   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
5382
5383 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
5384   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
5385   packages.</li>
5386
5387 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
5388   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
5389
5390 </ul>
5391
5392 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
5393 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
5394 discover database to find packages and
5395 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
5396 packages.</p>
5397
5398 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
5399 draft package is now checked into
5400 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5401 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
5402 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
5403 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
5404 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
5405 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
5406 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
5407 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
5408 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
5409 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
5410 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
5411 because of the freeze).</p>
5412
5413 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
5414 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
5415 inserted):</p>
5416
5417 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
5418
5419 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
5420 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
5421 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
5422
5423 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
5424 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
5425 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
5426 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
5427 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
5428 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
5429 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
5430
5431 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
5432 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
5433 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
5434 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
5435 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
5436 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
5437 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
5438 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
5439 not be installed?</p>
5440
5441 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
5442 please send me an email. :)</p>
5443
5444       </div>
5445       <div class="tags">
5446
5447
5448         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>.
5449
5450
5451       </div>
5452     </div>
5453     <div class="padding"></div>
5454
5455     <div class="entry">
5456       <div class="title">
5457         <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>
5458       </div>
5459       <div class="date">
5460          2nd January 2013
5461       </div>
5462       <div class="body">
5463         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
5464 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
5465 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
5466 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
5467 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
5468 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
5469 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
5470 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
5471 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
5472 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
5473
5474 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
5475 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
5476 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
5477
5478       </div>
5479       <div class="tags">
5480
5481
5482         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>.
5483
5484
5485       </div>
5486     </div>
5487     <div class="padding"></div>
5488
5489     <div class="entry">
5490       <div class="title">
5491         <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>
5492       </div>
5493       <div class="date">
5494         25th December 2012
5495       </div>
5496       <div class="body">
5497         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
5498 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
5499
5500 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
5501 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
5502 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
5503 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
5504 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
5505 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
5506 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
5507 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
5508 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
5509 name.</p>
5510
5511 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
5512 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
5513 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
5514
5515 <blockquote><pre>
5516 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
5517 cd bitcoin
5518 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
5519 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
5520 </pre></blockquote>
5521
5522 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
5523 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
5524 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
5525 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
5526 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
5527 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
5528 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
5529 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
5530 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
5531
5532 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5533 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5534 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5535
5536       </div>
5537       <div class="tags">
5538
5539
5540         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>.
5541
5542
5543       </div>
5544     </div>
5545     <div class="padding"></div>
5546
5547     <div class="entry">
5548       <div class="title">
5549         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
5550       </div>
5551       <div class="date">
5552         21st December 2012
5553       </div>
5554       <div class="body">
5555         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
5556 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
5557 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
5558 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
5559 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
5560 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
5561 is now maintained by a
5562 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
5563 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
5564 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
5565 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
5566 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
5567 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
5568 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
5569 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
5570 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
5571 Corallo in a
5572 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
5573 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
5574 Debian package.</p>
5575
5576 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
5577 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
5578 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
5579 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
5580 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
5581 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
5582 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
5583 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
5584 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
5585 new version to unstable.
5586
5587 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
5588 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
5589 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
5590 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
5591 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
5592 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
5593 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
5594 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
5595 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
5596 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
5597 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
5598 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
5599 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
5600 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
5601 have not tested them.</p>
5602
5603 <p>My
5604 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
5605 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
5606 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
5607 years ago, as can be
5608 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
5609 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
5610 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
5611 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
5612 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
5613 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
5614 the same address as last time,
5615 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5616
5617       </div>
5618       <div class="tags">
5619
5620
5621         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>.
5622
5623
5624       </div>
5625     </div>
5626     <div class="padding"></div>
5627
5628     <div class="entry">
5629       <div class="title">
5630         <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>
5631       </div>
5632       <div class="date">
5633          7th September 2012
5634       </div>
5635       <div class="body">
5636         <p>As I
5637 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
5638 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
5639 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
5640 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
5641 repository for the project</a>.</p>
5642
5643 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
5644 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
5645 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
5646 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
5647
5648 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
5649 PostScript formats at
5650 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
5651 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
5652
5653       </div>
5654       <div class="tags">
5655
5656
5657         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>.
5658
5659
5660       </div>
5661     </div>
5662     <div class="padding"></div>
5663
5664     <div class="entry">
5665       <div class="title">
5666         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
5667       </div>
5668       <div class="date">
5669         16th August 2012
5670       </div>
5671       <div class="body">
5672         <p>I dag fyller
5673 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
5674 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
5675 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
5676
5677       </div>
5678       <div class="tags">
5679
5680
5681         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>.
5682
5683
5684       </div>
5685     </div>
5686     <div class="padding"></div>
5687
5688     <div class="entry">
5689       <div class="title">
5690         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
5691       </div>
5692       <div class="date">
5693         24th June 2012
5694       </div>
5695       <div class="body">
5696         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
5697 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
5698 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
5699 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
5700 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
5701 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
5702 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
5703 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
5704 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
5705 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
5706 missing in my book.</p>
5707
5708 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
5709 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
5710 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
5711 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
5712 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
5713 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
5714 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
5715
5716       </div>
5717       <div class="tags">
5718
5719
5720         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>.
5721
5722
5723       </div>
5724     </div>
5725     <div class="padding"></div>
5726
5727     <div class="entry">
5728       <div class="title">
5729         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
5730       </div>
5731       <div class="date">
5732         21st November 2011
5733       </div>
5734       <div class="body">
5735         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
5736 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
5737 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
5738 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
5739 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
5740 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
5741 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
5742 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
5743 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
5744 the tools to do so.</p>
5745
5746 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
5747 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
5748 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
5749 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
5750
5751 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
5752 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
5753 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
5754 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
5755 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
5756 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
5757 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
5758 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
5759
5760 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
5761 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
5762 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
5763
5764 <p><pre>
5765 #!/usr/bin/perl
5766 use strict;
5767 use warnings;
5768 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
5769 BEGIN {
5770     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
5771     my %rhelmodules = (
5772         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
5773         );
5774     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
5775         eval "use $module;";
5776         if ($@) {
5777             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
5778             system("yum install -y $pkg");
5779             eval "use $module;";
5780         }
5781     }
5782 }
5783 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
5784
5785 upgrade_dell();
5786
5787 exit 0;
5788
5789 sub run_firmware_script {
5790     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
5791     unless ($script) {
5792         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
5793         exit 1
5794     }
5795     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
5796
5797     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
5798         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
5799     } else {
5800         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
5801     }
5802 }
5803
5804 sub run_firmware_scripts {
5805     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
5806     # Run firmware packages
5807     for my $dir (@dirs) {
5808         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
5809         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
5810         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
5811             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
5812             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
5813         }
5814         closedir $dh;
5815     }
5816 }
5817
5818 sub download {
5819     my $url = shift;
5820     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
5821     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
5822 }
5823
5824 sub upgrade_dell {
5825     my @dirs;
5826     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5827     chomp $product;
5828
5829     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
5830
5831         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
5832         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
5833
5834         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
5835             CLEANUP => 1
5836             );
5837         chdir($tmpdir);
5838         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
5839         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
5840         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
5841         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
5842         my $fwopts = "-q";
5843         if (@paths) {
5844             for my $url (@paths) {
5845                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
5846             }
5847             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
5848         } else {
5849             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5850             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5851         }
5852         chdir('/');
5853     } else {
5854         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5855         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5856     }
5857 }
5858
5859 sub fetch_dell_fw {
5860     my $path = shift;
5861     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
5862     download($url);
5863 }
5864
5865 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
5866 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
5867 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
5868 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
5869     my $filename = shift;
5870
5871     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5872     chomp $product;
5873     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
5874
5875     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
5876
5877     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
5878     my @paths;
5879     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
5880         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
5881         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
5882         my $oscode;
5883         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
5884             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
5885         } else {
5886             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
5887         }
5888         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
5889         {
5890             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
5891         }
5892     }
5893     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
5894         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
5895
5896         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
5897         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
5898
5899         my $cpath = $component->{path};
5900         for my $path (@paths) {
5901             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
5902                 push(@paths, $cpath);
5903             }
5904         }
5905     }
5906     return @paths;
5907 }
5908 </pre>
5909
5910 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
5911 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
5912 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
5913 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
5914 outdated.</p>
5915
5916       </div>
5917       <div class="tags">
5918
5919
5920         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>.
5921
5922
5923       </div>
5924     </div>
5925     <div class="padding"></div>
5926
5927     <div class="entry">
5928       <div class="title">
5929         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
5930       </div>
5931       <div class="date">
5932          4th August 2011
5933       </div>
5934       <div class="body">
5935         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
5936 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
5937 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
5938 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
5939 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
5940 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
5941 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
5942 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
5943 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
5944
5945 <p><blockquote>
5946 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
5947 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
5948 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
5949 </blockquote></p>
5950
5951 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
5952 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
5953 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
5954 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
5955 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
5956 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
5957 hard to explain.</p>
5958
5959 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
5960 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
5961 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
5962 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
5963 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
5964 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
5965 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
5966 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
5967 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
5968 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
5969 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
5970 mode).</p>
5971
5972 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
5973 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
5974 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
5975 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
5976 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
5977 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
5978 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
5979 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
5980 after visiting single user mode.</p>
5981
5982 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
5983 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
5984 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
5985 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
5986 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
5987 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
5988 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
5989 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
5990
5991 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
5992 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
5993 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
5994
5995       </div>
5996       <div class="tags">
5997
5998
5999         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>.
6000
6001
6002       </div>
6003     </div>
6004     <div class="padding"></div>
6005
6006     <div class="entry">
6007       <div class="title">
6008         <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>
6009       </div>
6010       <div class="date">
6011         30th July 2011
6012       </div>
6013       <div class="body">
6014         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
6015 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
6016 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
6017 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
6018 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
6019 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
6020 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
6021 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
6022 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
6023 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
6024 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
6025 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
6026 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
6027
6028 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
6029 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
6030 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
6031 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
6032 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
6033 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
6034 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
6035 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
6036 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
6037
6038 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
6039 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
6040 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
6041 is presented.</p>
6042
6043 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
6044 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
6045 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
6046 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
6047 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
6048 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
6049 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
6050 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
6051 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
6052 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
6053 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
6054 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
6055 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
6056 find time to push this forward.</p>
6057
6058       </div>
6059       <div class="tags">
6060
6061
6062         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>.
6063
6064
6065       </div>
6066     </div>
6067     <div class="padding"></div>
6068
6069     <div class="entry">
6070       <div class="title">
6071         <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>
6072       </div>
6073       <div class="date">
6074         29th July 2011
6075       </div>
6076       <div class="body">
6077         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
6078 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
6079 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
6080 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
6081 issues.</p>
6082
6083 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
6084 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
6085 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
6086
6087 <ol>
6088
6089 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
6090 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
6091 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
6092 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
6093 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
6094 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
6095 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
6096 Debian.</li>
6097
6098 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
6099 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
6100 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
6101 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
6102 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
6103 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
6104 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
6105 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
6106 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
6107 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
6108 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
6109 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
6110 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
6111
6112 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
6113 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
6114 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
6115 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
6116 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
6117 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
6118 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
6119 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
6120 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
6121 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
6122
6123 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
6124 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
6125 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
6126 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
6127 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
6128 latter behaviour.</li>
6129
6130 </ol>
6131
6132 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
6133 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
6134 it do not matter much.</p>
6135
6136 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
6137 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
6138 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
6139
6140       </div>
6141       <div class="tags">
6142
6143
6144         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6145
6146
6147       </div>
6148     </div>
6149     <div class="padding"></div>
6150
6151     <div class="entry">
6152       <div class="title">
6153         <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>
6154       </div>
6155       <div class="date">
6156         26th July 2011
6157       </div>
6158       <div class="body">
6159         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
6160 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
6161 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
6162 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
6163 security support for a few years.</p>
6164
6165 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
6166 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
6167 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
6168 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
6169 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
6170 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
6171 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
6172 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
6173 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
6174 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
6175 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
6176 easier in the future.</p>
6177
6178 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
6179 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
6180 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
6181 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
6182 do not have time for.</p>
6183
6184       </div>
6185       <div class="tags">
6186
6187
6188         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>.
6189
6190
6191       </div>
6192     </div>
6193     <div class="padding"></div>
6194
6195     <div class="entry">
6196       <div class="title">
6197         <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>
6198       </div>
6199       <div class="date">
6200          3rd April 2011
6201       </div>
6202       <div class="body">
6203         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
6204 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
6205 update in English.</p>
6206
6207 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
6208 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
6209 of the British service
6210 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
6211 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
6212 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
6213 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
6214 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
6215 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
6216 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
6217 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
6218 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
6219 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
6220 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
6221 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
6222 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
6223
6224 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
6225 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
6226 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
6227 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
6228 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
6229 public infrastructure.</p>
6230
6231 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
6232 such service?</p>
6233
6234       </div>
6235       <div class="tags">
6236
6237
6238         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
6239
6240
6241       </div>
6242     </div>
6243     <div class="padding"></div>
6244
6245     <div class="entry">
6246       <div class="title">
6247         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_NVD_and_CPE_to_track_CVEs_in_locally_maintained_software.html">Using NVD and CPE to track CVEs in locally maintained software</a>
6248       </div>
6249       <div class="date">
6250         28th January 2011
6251       </div>
6252       <div class="body">
6253         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
6254 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
6255 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
6256 available on the Internet, and check our locally
6257 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
6258 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
6259 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
6260 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
6261 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
6262 out which security holes were present in our free software
6263 collection.</p>
6264
6265 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
6266 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
6267 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
6268 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
6269 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
6270 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
6271 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
6272 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
6273 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
6274 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
6275 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
6276 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
6277 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
6278 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
6279 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
6280 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
6281
6282 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
6283 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
6284 check out, one could look up
6285 <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
6286 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
6287 The most recent one is
6288 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
6289 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
6290 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
6291
6292 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
6293 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
6294 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
6295 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
6296 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
6297 security issues out.</p>
6298
6299 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
6300 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
6301 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
6302 RHEL is providing
6303 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
6304 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
6305 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
6306
6307 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
6308 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
6309 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
6310 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
6311 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
6312 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
6313 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
6314 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
6315 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
6316 established soon.</p>
6317
6318 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
6319 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
6320 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
6321 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
6322 for their packages.</p>
6323
6324       </div>
6325       <div class="tags">
6326
6327
6328         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>.
6329
6330
6331       </div>
6332     </div>
6333     <div class="padding"></div>
6334
6335     <div class="entry">
6336       <div class="title">
6337         <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>
6338       </div>
6339       <div class="date">
6340         23rd January 2011
6341       </div>
6342       <div class="body">
6343         <p>In the
6344 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
6345 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6346 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6347 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
6348 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6349 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6350 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
6351 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6352 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
6353 one of my machines like this:</p>
6354
6355 <pre>
6356 loaded modules:
6357 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6358 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
6359 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
6360 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6361 10de:03ec pata_amd
6362 10de:03f6 sata_nv
6363 1022:1103 k8temp
6364 109e:036e bttv
6365 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
6366 11ab:4364 sky2
6367 </pre>
6368
6369 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6370 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
6371
6372 <pre>
6373 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6374     echo loaded pci modules:
6375     (
6376         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6377         for address in * ; do
6378             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6379                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6380                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6381                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6382                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
6383                     echo "$id $module"
6384                 fi
6385             fi
6386         done
6387     )
6388     echo
6389 fi
6390 </pre>
6391
6392 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6393 mappings:</p>
6394
6395 <pre>
6396 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6397     echo loaded usb modules:
6398     (
6399         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6400         for address in * ; do
6401             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6402                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6403                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6404                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6405                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
6406                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
6407                         echo "$id $module"
6408                     fi
6409                 fi
6410             fi
6411         done
6412     )
6413     echo
6414 fi
6415 </pre>
6416
6417 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6418 well.</p>
6419
6420       </div>
6421       <div class="tags">
6422
6423
6424         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>.
6425
6426
6427       </div>
6428     </div>
6429     <div class="padding"></div>
6430
6431     <div class="entry">
6432       <div class="title">
6433         <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>
6434       </div>
6435       <div class="date">
6436         22nd December 2010
6437       </div>
6438       <div class="body">
6439         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
6440 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
6441 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
6442 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
6443 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
6444 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
6445 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
6446 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
6447 university.</p>
6448
6449 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
6450 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
6451 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
6452 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
6453 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
6454 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
6455 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
6456 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
6457
6458 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
6459 I perform on a new model.</p>
6460
6461 <ul>
6462
6463 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
6464 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
6465 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
6466
6467 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
6468 installation, X.org is working.</li>
6469
6470 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
6471 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
6472 reported by the program.</li>
6473
6474 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
6475 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
6476 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
6477 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
6478 normally test this by playing
6479 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
6480 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
6481
6482 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
6483 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6484
6485 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
6486 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6487
6488 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
6489 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
6490
6491 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
6492 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
6493 few.</li>
6494
6495 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
6496 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
6497 notice this.</li>
6498
6499 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
6500 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
6501 resume.</li>
6502
6503 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
6504 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
6505 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
6506 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
6507 not.</li>
6508
6509 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
6510 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
6511 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
6512 existence.</li>
6513
6514 </ul>
6515
6516 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
6517 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
6518 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
6519 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
6520 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
6521 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
6522 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
6523 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
6524
6525       </div>
6526       <div class="tags">
6527
6528
6529         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>.
6530
6531
6532       </div>
6533     </div>
6534     <div class="padding"></div>
6535
6536     <div class="entry">
6537       <div class="title">
6538         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
6539       </div>
6540       <div class="date">
6541         11th December 2010
6542       </div>
6543       <div class="body">
6544         <p>As I continue to explore
6545 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
6546 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
6547 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
6548
6549 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
6550 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
6551 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
6552 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
6553 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
6554 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
6555 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
6556 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
6557 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
6558 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
6559 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
6560 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
6561 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
6562 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
6563 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
6564 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
6565 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
6566 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
6567 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
6568 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
6569
6570 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
6571 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
6572 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
6573 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
6574 If the Skolelinux foundation
6575 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
6576 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
6577 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
6578 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
6579 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
6580 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
6581 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
6582 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
6583
6584 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
6585 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
6586 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
6587 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
6588 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
6589 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
6590 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
6591 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
6592 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
6593 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
6594 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
6595 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
6596 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
6597 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
6598 currencies.</p>
6599
6600 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
6601 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
6602 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
6603 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
6604 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
6605 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
6606 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
6607 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
6608 BitCoins.  Check out
6609 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
6610 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
6611 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
6612 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
6613 yet.</p>
6614
6615 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
6616 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
6617 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
6618 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
6619 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
6620
6621       </div>
6622       <div class="tags">
6623
6624
6625         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>.
6626
6627
6628       </div>
6629     </div>
6630     <div class="padding"></div>
6631
6632     <div class="entry">
6633       <div class="title">
6634         <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>
6635       </div>
6636       <div class="date">
6637         10th December 2010
6638       </div>
6639       <div class="body">
6640         <p>With this weeks lawless
6641 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
6642 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
6643 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
6644 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
6645 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
6646 A blog post from
6647 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
6648 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
6649 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
6650 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
6651 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
6652 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
6653 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
6654
6655 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
6656 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
6657 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
6658 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
6659 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
6660 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
6661 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
6662 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
6663 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
6664 Debian</a> soon.</p>
6665
6666 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
6667 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
6668 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
6669 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
6670 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
6671 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
6672 you can even get
6673 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
6674 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
6675 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
6676 on the current exchange rates.</p>
6677
6678 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
6679 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
6680 donations to the address
6681 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
6682
6683       </div>
6684       <div class="tags">
6685
6686
6687         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>.
6688
6689
6690       </div>
6691     </div>
6692     <div class="padding"></div>
6693
6694     <div class="entry">
6695       <div class="title">
6696         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
6697       </div>
6698       <div class="date">
6699         27th November 2010
6700       </div>
6701       <div class="body">
6702         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
6703 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
6704 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
6705 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
6706 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
6707 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
6708 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
6709 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
6710
6711 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
6712 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6713 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
6714 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
6715 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
6716 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
6717 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
6718 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
6719 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
6720 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
6721 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
6722
6723 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
6724 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
6725 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
6726 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
6727 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
6728 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
6729 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
6730 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
6731 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
6732 what is going on.</p>
6733
6734       </div>
6735       <div class="tags">
6736
6737
6738         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>.
6739
6740
6741       </div>
6742     </div>
6743     <div class="padding"></div>
6744
6745     <div class="entry">
6746       <div class="title">
6747         <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>
6748       </div>
6749       <div class="date">
6750         22nd November 2010
6751       </div>
6752       <div class="body">
6753         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
6754 upgrade testing of the
6755 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6756 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
6757 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
6758 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
6759
6760 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6761
6762 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6763
6764 <blockquote><p>
6765   apache2.2-bin
6766   aptdaemon
6767   baobab
6768   binfmt-support
6769   browser-plugin-gnash
6770   cheese-common
6771   cli-common
6772   cups-pk-helper
6773   dmz-cursor-theme
6774   empathy
6775   empathy-common
6776   freedesktop-sound-theme
6777   freeglut3
6778   gconf-defaults-service
6779   gdm-themes
6780   gedit-plugins
6781   geoclue
6782   geoclue-hostip
6783   geoclue-localnet
6784   geoclue-manual
6785   geoclue-yahoo
6786   gnash
6787   gnash-common
6788   gnome
6789   gnome-backgrounds
6790   gnome-cards-data
6791   gnome-codec-install
6792   gnome-core
6793   gnome-desktop-environment
6794   gnome-disk-utility
6795   gnome-screenshot
6796   gnome-search-tool
6797   gnome-session-canberra
6798   gnome-system-log
6799   gnome-themes-extras
6800   gnome-themes-more
6801   gnome-user-share
6802   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
6803   gstreamer0.10-tools
6804   gtk2-engines
6805   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
6806   gtk2-engines-smooth
6807   hamster-applet
6808   libapache2-mod-dnssd
6809   libapr1
6810   libaprutil1
6811   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
6812   libaprutil1-ldap
6813   libart2.0-cil
6814   libboost-date-time1.42.0
6815   libboost-python1.42.0
6816   libboost-thread1.42.0
6817   libchamplain-0.4-0
6818   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
6819   libcheese-gtk18
6820   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
6821   libcryptui0
6822   libdiscid0
6823   libelf1
6824   libepc-1.0-2
6825   libepc-common
6826   libepc-ui-1.0-2
6827   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
6828   libfreerdp0
6829   libgconf2.0-cil
6830   libgdata-common
6831   libgdata7
6832   libgdu-gtk0
6833   libgee2
6834   libgeoclue0
6835   libgexiv2-0
6836   libgif4
6837   libglade2.0-cil
6838   libglib2.0-cil
6839   libgmime2.4-cil
6840   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
6841   libgnome2.24-cil
6842   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
6843   libgpod-common
6844   libgpod4
6845   libgtk2.0-cil
6846   libgtkglext1
6847   libgtksourceview2.0-common
6848   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
6849   libmono-addins0.2-cil
6850   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
6851   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
6852   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
6853   libmono-posix2.0-cil
6854   libmono-security2.0-cil
6855   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
6856   libmono-system2.0-cil
6857   libmtp8
6858   libmusicbrainz3-6
6859   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
6860   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
6861   libopal3.6.8
6862   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
6863   libpt2.6.7
6864   libpython2.6
6865   librpm1
6866   librpmio1
6867   libsdl1.2debian
6868   libsrtp0
6869   libssh-4
6870   libtelepathy-farsight0
6871   libtelepathy-glib0
6872   libtidy-0.99-0
6873   media-player-info
6874   mesa-utils
6875   mono-2.0-gac
6876   mono-gac
6877   mono-runtime
6878   nautilus-sendto
6879   nautilus-sendto-empathy
6880   p7zip-full
6881   pkg-config
6882   python-aptdaemon
6883   python-aptdaemon-gtk
6884   python-axiom
6885   python-beautifulsoup
6886   python-bugbuddy
6887   python-clientform
6888   python-coherence
6889   python-configobj
6890   python-crypto
6891   python-cupshelpers
6892   python-elementtree
6893   python-epsilon
6894   python-evolution
6895   python-feedparser
6896   python-gdata
6897   python-gdbm
6898   python-gst0.10
6899   python-gtkglext1
6900   python-gtksourceview2
6901   python-httplib2
6902   python-louie
6903   python-mako
6904   python-markupsafe
6905   python-mechanize
6906   python-nevow
6907   python-notify
6908   python-opengl
6909   python-openssl
6910   python-pam
6911   python-pkg-resources
6912   python-pyasn1
6913   python-pysqlite2
6914   python-rdflib
6915   python-serial
6916   python-tagpy
6917   python-twisted-bin
6918   python-twisted-conch
6919   python-twisted-core
6920   python-twisted-web
6921   python-utidylib
6922   python-webkit
6923   python-xdg
6924   python-zope.interface
6925   remmina
6926   remmina-plugin-data
6927   remmina-plugin-rdp
6928   remmina-plugin-vnc
6929   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
6930   rhythmbox-plugins
6931   rpm-common
6932   rpm2cpio
6933   seahorse-plugins
6934   shotwell
6935   software-center
6936   system-config-printer-udev
6937   telepathy-gabble
6938   telepathy-mission-control-5
6939   telepathy-salut
6940   tomboy
6941   totem
6942   totem-coherence
6943   totem-mozilla
6944   totem-plugins
6945   transmission-common
6946   xdg-user-dirs
6947   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
6948   xserver-xephyr
6949 </p></blockquote>
6950
6951 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
6952
6953 <blockquote><p>
6954   cheese
6955   ekiga
6956   eog
6957   epiphany-extensions
6958   evolution-exchange
6959   fast-user-switch-applet
6960   file-roller
6961   gcalctool
6962   gconf-editor
6963   gdm
6964   gedit
6965   gedit-common
6966   gnome-games
6967   gnome-games-data
6968   gnome-nettool
6969   gnome-system-tools
6970   gnome-themes
6971   gnuchess
6972   gucharmap
6973   guile-1.8-libs
6974   libavahi-ui0
6975   libdmx1
6976   libgalago3
6977   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
6978   libgtksourceview2.0-0
6979   liblircclient0
6980   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
6981   libspeexdsp1
6982   libsvga1
6983   rhythmbox
6984   seahorse
6985   sound-juicer
6986   system-config-printer
6987   totem-common
6988   transmission-gtk
6989   vinagre
6990   vino
6991 </p></blockquote>
6992
6993 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
6994
6995 <blockquote><p>
6996   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
6997 </p></blockquote>
6998
6999 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7000
7001 <blockquote><p>
7002 [nothing]
7003 </p></blockquote>
7004
7005 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
7006
7007 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7008
7009 <blockquote><p>
7010   ksmserver
7011 </p></blockquote>
7012
7013 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7014
7015 <blockquote><p>
7016   kwin
7017   network-manager-kde
7018 </p></blockquote>
7019
7020 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7021
7022 <blockquote><p>
7023   arts
7024   dolphin
7025   freespacenotifier
7026   google-gadgets-gst
7027   google-gadgets-xul
7028   kappfinder
7029   kcalc
7030   kcharselect
7031   kde-core
7032   kde-plasma-desktop
7033   kde-standard
7034   kde-window-manager
7035   kdeartwork
7036   kdeartwork-emoticons
7037   kdeartwork-style
7038   kdeartwork-theme-icon
7039   kdebase
7040   kdebase-apps
7041   kdebase-workspace
7042   kdebase-workspace-bin
7043   kdebase-workspace-data
7044   kdeeject
7045   kdelibs
7046   kdeplasma-addons
7047   kdeutils
7048   kdewallpapers
7049   kdf
7050   kfloppy
7051   kgpg
7052   khelpcenter4
7053   kinfocenter
7054   konq-plugins-l10n
7055   konqueror-nsplugins
7056   kscreensaver
7057   kscreensaver-xsavers
7058   ktimer
7059   kwrite
7060   libgle3
7061   libkde4-ruby1.8
7062   libkonq5
7063   libkonq5-templates
7064   libnetpbm10
7065   libplasma-ruby
7066   libplasma-ruby1.8
7067   libqt4-ruby1.8
7068   marble-data
7069   marble-plugins
7070   netpbm
7071   nuvola-icon-theme
7072   plasma-dataengines-workspace
7073   plasma-desktop
7074   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
7075   plasma-runners-addons
7076   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
7077   plasma-scriptengine-python
7078   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
7079   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
7080   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
7081   plasma-scriptengines
7082   plasma-wallpapers-addons
7083   plasma-widget-folderview
7084   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7085   ruby
7086   sweeper
7087   update-notifier-kde
7088   xscreensaver-data-extra
7089   xscreensaver-gl
7090   xscreensaver-gl-extra
7091   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7092 </p></blockquote>
7093
7094 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7095
7096 <blockquote><p>
7097   ark
7098   google-gadgets-common
7099   google-gadgets-qt
7100   htdig
7101   kate
7102   kdebase-bin
7103   kdebase-data
7104   kdepasswd
7105   kfind
7106   klipper
7107   konq-plugins
7108   konqueror
7109   ksysguard
7110   ksysguardd
7111   libarchive1
7112   libcln6
7113   libeet1
7114   libeina-svn-06
7115   libggadget-1.0-0b
7116   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
7117   libgps19
7118   libkdecorations4
7119   libkephal4
7120   libkonq4
7121   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
7122   libkscreensaver5
7123   libksgrd4
7124   libksignalplotter4
7125   libkunitconversion4
7126   libkwineffects1a
7127   libmarblewidget4
7128   libntrack-qt4-1
7129   libntrack0
7130   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
7131   libplasmaclock4a
7132   libplasmagenericshell4
7133   libprocesscore4a
7134   libprocessui4a
7135   libqalculate5
7136   libqedje0a
7137   libqtruby4shared2
7138   libqzion0a
7139   libruby1.8
7140   libscim8c2a
7141   libsmokekdecore4-3
7142   libsmokekdeui4-3
7143   libsmokekfile3
7144   libsmokekhtml3
7145   libsmokekio3
7146   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
7147   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
7148   libsmokekparts3
7149   libsmokektexteditor3
7150   libsmokekutils3
7151   libsmokenepomuk3
7152   libsmokephonon3
7153   libsmokeplasma3
7154   libsmokeqtcore4-3
7155   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
7156   libsmokeqtgui4-3
7157   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
7158   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
7159   libsmokeqtscript4-3
7160   libsmokeqtsql4-3
7161   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
7162   libsmokeqttest4-3
7163   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
7164   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
7165   libsmokeqtxml4-3
7166   libsmokesolid3
7167   libsmokesoprano3
7168   libtaskmanager4a
7169   libtidy-0.99-0
7170   libweather-ion4a
7171   libxklavier16
7172   libxxf86misc1
7173   okteta
7174   oxygencursors
7175   plasma-dataengines-addons
7176   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
7177   plasma-widget-lancelot
7178   plasma-widgets-addons
7179   plasma-widgets-workspace
7180   polkit-kde-1
7181   ruby1.8
7182   systemsettings
7183   update-notifier-common
7184 </p></blockquote>
7185
7186 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
7187 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
7188 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
7189 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
7190
7191       </div>
7192       <div class="tags">
7193
7194
7195         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>.
7196
7197
7198       </div>
7199     </div>
7200     <div class="padding"></div>
7201
7202     <div class="entry">
7203       <div class="title">
7204         <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>
7205       </div>
7206       <div class="date">
7207         22nd November 2010
7208       </div>
7209       <div class="body">
7210         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
7211 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
7212 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
7213 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
7214 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
7215 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
7216 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
7217 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
7218 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
7219
7220 <p>I found
7221 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
7222 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
7223 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
7224 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
7225 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
7226 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
7227
7228 <pre>
7229 #!/bin/sh
7230
7231 # Based on
7232 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
7233
7234 set -e
7235 set -x
7236
7237 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
7238     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
7239     exit 1
7240 else
7241     host="$1"
7242 fi
7243
7244 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
7245     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
7246     exit 1
7247 fi
7248
7249 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
7250 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
7251 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
7252 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
7253
7254 img=$host.img
7255 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
7256 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
7257
7258 parted $img mklabel msdos
7259 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
7260 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
7261 parted $img set 1 boot on
7262
7263 modprobe dm-mod
7264 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
7265 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
7266
7267 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
7268 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
7269 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
7270
7271 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
7272 losetup -d /dev/loop0
7273 </pre>
7274
7275 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
7276 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
7277
7278 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
7279 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
7280 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
7281 seem to work just fine.</p>
7282
7283       </div>
7284       <div class="tags">
7285
7286
7287         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>.
7288
7289
7290       </div>
7291     </div>
7292     <div class="padding"></div>
7293
7294     <div class="entry">
7295       <div class="title">
7296         <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>
7297       </div>
7298       <div class="date">
7299         20th November 2010
7300       </div>
7301       <div class="body">
7302         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
7303 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7304 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
7305 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
7306
7307 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
7308 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
7309 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
7310
7311 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
7312
7313 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7314
7315 <blockquote><p>
7316   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
7317   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
7318   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
7319   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
7320   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
7321   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
7322   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
7323   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
7324   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
7325   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
7326   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7327   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
7328   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
7329   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
7330   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
7331   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
7332   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
7333   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
7334   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7335   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
7336   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
7337   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
7338   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
7339   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
7340   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
7341   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7342   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7343   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
7344   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7345   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
7346   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
7347   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
7348   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
7349   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
7350   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
7351   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
7352   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
7353   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
7354   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
7355   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
7356   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
7357   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
7358   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
7359   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
7360   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
7361   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
7362   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
7363   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
7364   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
7365   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
7366   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
7367   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
7368   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7369   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
7370   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
7371   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
7372   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
7373   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
7374   zip
7375 </p></blockquote>
7376
7377 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
7378
7379 <blockquote><p>
7380   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
7381   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
7382   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
7383   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
7384   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
7385   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
7386   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
7387   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
7388   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
7389   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
7390   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
7391   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
7392   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
7393   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7394   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
7395   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
7396   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7397   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
7398   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
7399   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
7400   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
7401   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
7402   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
7403   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
7404   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
7405   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
7406   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
7407   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
7408   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
7409 </p></blockquote>
7410
7411 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7412
7413 <blockquote><p>
7414   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7415 </p></blockquote>
7416
7417 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7418
7419 <blockquote><p>
7420 [nothing]
7421 </p></blockquote>
7422
7423 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
7424
7425 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7426
7427 <blockquote><p>
7428   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
7429   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
7430   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
7431   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
7432   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
7433   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
7434   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
7435   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
7436   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
7437   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
7438   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
7439   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
7440   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
7441   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
7442   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
7443   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
7444   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
7445   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
7446   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
7447   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
7448   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
7449   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
7450   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
7451   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
7452   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
7453   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
7454   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
7455   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
7456   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
7457   ttf-sazanami-gothic
7458 </p></blockquote>
7459
7460 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7461
7462 <blockquote><p>
7463   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
7464   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
7465   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
7466   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
7467   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
7468   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
7469   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
7470   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
7471   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
7472   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
7473   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
7474   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
7475   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
7476   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
7477   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
7478   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
7479   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
7480   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
7481   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
7482   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
7483   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7484   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
7485   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
7486   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
7487   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
7488   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
7489   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
7490   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
7491   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
7492   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
7493   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
7494   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
7495   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
7496 </p></blockquote>
7497
7498 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7499
7500 <blockquote><p>
7501   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
7502   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
7503   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
7504   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
7505   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7506   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
7507   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7508 </p></blockquote>
7509
7510 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7511
7512 <blockquote><p>
7513   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
7514 </p></blockquote>
7515
7516       </div>
7517       <div class="tags">
7518
7519
7520         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>.
7521
7522
7523       </div>
7524     </div>
7525     <div class="padding"></div>
7526
7527     <div class="entry">
7528       <div class="title">
7529         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
7530       </div>
7531       <div class="date">
7532         20th November 2010
7533       </div>
7534       <div class="body">
7535         <p>Answering
7536 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
7537 call from the Gnash project</a> for
7538 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
7539 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
7540 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
7541 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
7542 releases out more often.</p>
7543
7544 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
7545 I have considered setting up a <a
7546 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
7547 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
7548 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
7549 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
7550 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
7551 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
7552 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
7553 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
7554 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
7555 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
7556 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
7557 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
7558
7559       </div>
7560       <div class="tags">
7561
7562
7563         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>.
7564
7565
7566       </div>
7567     </div>
7568     <div class="padding"></div>
7569
7570     <div class="entry">
7571       <div class="title">
7572         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
7573       </div>
7574       <div class="date">
7575          9th November 2010
7576       </div>
7577       <div class="body">
7578         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
7579
7580 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
7581 3D linked in from
7582 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
7583 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
7584
7585       </div>
7586       <div class="tags">
7587
7588
7589         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>.
7590
7591
7592       </div>
7593     </div>
7594     <div class="padding"></div>
7595
7596     <div class="entry">
7597       <div class="title">
7598         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
7599       </div>
7600       <div class="date">
7601         24th October 2010
7602       </div>
7603       <div class="body">
7604         <p>Some updates.</p>
7605
7606 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
7607 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
7608 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
7609 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
7610 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
7611 :)</p>
7612
7613 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
7614 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
7615 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
7616 It is called
7617 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
7618 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
7619 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
7620 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
7621 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
7622 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
7623
7624 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
7625 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
7626 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
7627 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
7628 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
7629 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
7630 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
7631 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
7632 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
7633 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
7634
7635       </div>
7636       <div class="tags">
7637
7638
7639         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>.
7640
7641
7642       </div>
7643     </div>
7644     <div class="padding"></div>
7645
7646     <div class="entry">
7647       <div class="title">
7648         <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>
7649       </div>
7650       <div class="date">
7651          4th September 2010
7652       </div>
7653       <div class="body">
7654         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
7655 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
7656 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
7657 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
7658 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
7659 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
7660 installed.</p>
7661
7662 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
7663 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
7664 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
7665 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
7666 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7667 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
7668 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
7669 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
7670 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
7671
7672 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
7673 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
7674 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
7675 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
7676 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
7677 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
7678 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
7679 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
7680 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
7681 pages they want to visit.</p>
7682
7683 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
7684 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
7685 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
7686 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
7687 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
7688 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
7689 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
7690 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
7691 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
7692 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
7693 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
7694
7695       </div>
7696       <div class="tags">
7697
7698
7699         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>.
7700
7701
7702       </div>
7703     </div>
7704     <div class="padding"></div>
7705
7706     <div class="entry">
7707       <div class="title">
7708         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
7709       </div>
7710       <div class="date">
7711         27th July 2010
7712       </div>
7713       <div class="body">
7714         <p>I discovered this while doing
7715 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
7716 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
7717 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
7718 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
7719 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
7720
7721 <p>An example is from todays
7722 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
7723 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
7724 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
7725 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
7726 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
7727 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
7728 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
7729
7730 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
7731
7732 <blockquote><pre>
7733 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
7734  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
7735   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
7736 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
7737  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
7738 </pre></blockquote>
7739
7740 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
7741 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
7742 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
7743 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
7744 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
7745 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
7746 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
7747 of dependency loops.</p>
7748
7749 <p>Thanks to
7750 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
7751 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
7752 dependencies
7753 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
7754 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
7755
7756 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
7757 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
7758 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
7759 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
7760 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
7761 it.</p>
7762
7763       </div>
7764       <div class="tags">
7765
7766
7767         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>.
7768
7769
7770       </div>
7771     </div>
7772     <div class="padding"></div>
7773
7774     <div class="entry">
7775       <div class="title">
7776         <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>
7777       </div>
7778       <div class="date">
7779         17th July 2010
7780       </div>
7781       <div class="body">
7782         <p>This is a
7783 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
7784 on my
7785 <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
7786 work</a> on
7787 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
7788 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
7789
7790 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
7791 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
7792 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
7793 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
7794
7795 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
7796 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
7797 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
7798
7799 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
7800
7801 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
7802 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
7803 the web.
7804
7805 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
7806 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
7807 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
7808 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
7809 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
7810 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
7811
7812 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
7813 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
7814 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
7815 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
7816 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
7817 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
7818 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
7819 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
7820 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
7821 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
7822 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
7823 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
7824 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
7825 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
7826 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
7827 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
7828
7829 <blockquote><pre>
7830 ldapsearch -h ldap \
7831   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
7832   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
7833   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
7834   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
7835   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
7836   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
7837
7838 ldapsearch -h ldap \
7839   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
7840   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
7841   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
7842   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
7843   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
7844 </pre></blockquote>
7845
7846 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
7847 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
7848 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
7849 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7850 also exist.</p>
7851
7852 <blockquote><pre>
7853 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7854 objectclass: top
7855 objectclass: dnsdomain
7856 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7857 dc: tjener
7858 arecord: 10.0.2.2
7859 associateddomain: tjener.intern
7860
7861 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7862 objectclass: top
7863 objectclass: dnsdomain2
7864 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
7865 dc: 2
7866 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
7867 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
7868 </pre></blockquote>
7869
7870 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
7871 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
7872 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
7873 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
7874 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
7875 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
7876 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
7877 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
7878 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
7879 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
7880 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
7881 instead.</p>
7882
7883 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
7884 like this:</p>
7885
7886 <blockquote><pre>
7887 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
7888   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
7889   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
7890   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
7891   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
7892   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
7893
7894 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
7895   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
7896 </pre></blockquote>
7897
7898 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
7899 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
7900 reverse lookups.</p>
7901
7902 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
7903 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
7904 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
7905 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
7906
7907 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
7908 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
7909 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
7910
7911 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
7912 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
7913 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
7914 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
7915 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
7916
7917 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
7918 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
7919 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
7920 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
7921 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
7922
7923 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
7924 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
7925 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
7926 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
7927 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
7928 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
7929
7930 <blockquote><pre>
7931 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
7932     SUP top
7933     AUXILIARY
7934     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
7935           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
7936           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
7937           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
7938           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
7939     ))
7940 </pre></blockquote>
7941
7942 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
7943 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
7944 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
7945 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
7946 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
7947 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
7948
7949 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
7950
7951 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
7952 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
7953 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
7954 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
7955 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
7956
7957 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
7958 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
7959 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
7960 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
7961
7962 <blockquote><pre>
7963 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
7964 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
7965 </pre></blockquote>
7966
7967 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
7968 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
7969 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
7970 search result is this entry:</p>
7971
7972 <blockquote><pre>
7973 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7974 cn: dhcp
7975 objectClass: top
7976 objectClass: dhcpServer
7977 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7978 </pre></blockquote>
7979
7980 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
7981 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
7982 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
7983 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
7984 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
7985 The search result is this entry:</p>
7986
7987 <blockquote><pre>
7988 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7989 cn: DHCP Config
7990 objectClass: top
7991 objectClass: dhcpService
7992 objectClass: dhcpOptions
7993 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
7994 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
7995 dhcpStatements: authoritative
7996 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
7997 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
7998 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
7999 </pre></blockquote>
8000
8001 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
8002 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
8003 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
8004 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
8005 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
8006 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
8007 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
8008 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
8009 related computer objects.</p>
8010
8011 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
8012 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
8013 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
8014 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
8015 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
8016 like:</p>
8017
8018 <blockquote><pre>
8019 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8020 cn: hostname
8021 objectClass: top
8022 objectClass: dhcpHost
8023 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8024 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
8025 </pre></blockquote>
8026
8027 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
8028 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
8029 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
8030 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
8031 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
8032 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
8033 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
8034 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
8035 structural object class.
8036
8037 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
8038
8039 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
8040 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
8041 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
8042 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
8043 in the configuration.</p>
8044
8045 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
8046 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
8047 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
8048 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
8049 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
8050 structure.</p>
8051
8052 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
8053 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
8054
8055 <blockquote><pre>
8056 ou=services
8057   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
8058     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
8059     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8060       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8061         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8062     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8063       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8064         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8065     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
8066       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
8067 </pre></blockquote>
8068
8069 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
8070 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
8071 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
8072 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
8073
8074 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
8075 like this:</p>
8076
8077 <blockquote><pre>
8078 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8079 dc: hostname
8080 objectClass: top
8081 objectClass: dhcpHost
8082 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8083 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
8084 associateddomain: hostname.intern
8085 arecord: 10.11.12.13
8086 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8087 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
8088 </pre></blockquote>
8089
8090 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
8091 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
8092 auxiliary object class.</p>
8093
8094       </div>
8095       <div class="tags">
8096
8097
8098         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>.
8099
8100
8101       </div>
8102     </div>
8103     <div class="padding"></div>
8104
8105     <div class="entry">
8106       <div class="title">
8107         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
8108       </div>
8109       <div class="date">
8110         14th July 2010
8111       </div>
8112       <div class="body">
8113         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
8114 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
8115 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
8116 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
8117 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
8118
8119 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
8120 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
8121
8122 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
8123 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
8124 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
8125 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
8126 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
8127 to a slave DNS server.</p>
8128
8129 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
8130 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
8131 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
8132 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
8133 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
8134 seem to work.</p>
8135
8136 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
8137 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
8138 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
8139 this:</p>
8140
8141 <blockquote><pre>
8142   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8143   cn: hostname
8144   objectClass: dhcphost
8145   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8146   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
8147   associateddomain: hostname.intern
8148   arecord: 10.11.12.13
8149   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8150   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
8151   ldapconfigsound: Y
8152 </pre></blockquote>
8153
8154 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
8155 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
8156 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
8157 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
8158
8159 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
8160 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
8161 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
8162 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
8163 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
8164 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
8165 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
8166 might be a good place to put it.</p>
8167
8168 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8169 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8170
8171       </div>
8172       <div class="tags">
8173
8174
8175         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>.
8176
8177
8178       </div>
8179     </div>
8180     <div class="padding"></div>
8181
8182     <div class="entry">
8183       <div class="title">
8184         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
8185       </div>
8186       <div class="date">
8187         11th July 2010
8188       </div>
8189       <div class="body">
8190         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
8191 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
8192 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
8193 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
8194
8195 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
8196 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
8197 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
8198 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
8199 LTSP clients.</p>
8200
8201 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
8202 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
8203 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
8204
8205 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
8206 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
8207 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
8208
8209 <blockquote><pre>
8210 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
8211 #
8212 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
8213 #
8214 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
8215 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
8216 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
8217 #
8218 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
8219 # existence of attribute names.
8220 #
8221 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
8222 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
8223 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
8224 #
8225 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
8226 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
8227 #
8228 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
8229 #     SUP top
8230 #     AUXILIARY
8231 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
8232
8233 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
8234 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
8235     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
8236     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
8237         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
8238         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
8239             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
8240             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
8241             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
8242             # bass value on to clients
8243             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
8244         done
8245     done
8246 fi
8247 </pre></blockquote>
8248
8249 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
8250 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
8251 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
8252 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
8253 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
8254
8255 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8256 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8257
8258 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
8259 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
8260 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
8261 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
8262 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
8263 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
8264
8265       </div>
8266       <div class="tags">
8267
8268
8269         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>.
8270
8271
8272       </div>
8273     </div>
8274     <div class="padding"></div>
8275
8276     <div class="entry">
8277       <div class="title">
8278         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8279       </div>
8280       <div class="date">
8281          9th July 2010
8282       </div>
8283       <div class="body">
8284         <p>Since
8285 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
8286 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
8287 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
8288 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
8289 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
8290 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
8291 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
8292 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
8293 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
8294 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
8295 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
8296 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
8297 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
8298
8299       </div>
8300       <div class="tags">
8301
8302
8303         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>.
8304
8305
8306       </div>
8307     </div>
8308     <div class="padding"></div>
8309
8310     <div class="entry">
8311       <div class="title">
8312         <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>
8313       </div>
8314       <div class="date">
8315          3rd July 2010
8316       </div>
8317       <div class="body">
8318         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
8319 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
8320 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
8321 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
8322 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
8323 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
8324 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
8325 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
8326
8327 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
8328 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
8329 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
8330 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
8331 publish the difference.</p>
8332
8333 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8334
8335 <blockquote><p>
8336   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8337   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
8338   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
8339   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8340   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
8341   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8342   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
8343   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
8344 </p></blockquote>
8345
8346 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8347
8348 <blockquote><p>
8349   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
8350   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
8351   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
8352   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
8353   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
8354   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
8355   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8356   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
8357   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8358   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8359   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
8360   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
8361   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
8362   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
8363   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
8364   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
8365   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
8366   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
8367   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
8368   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
8369 </p></blockquote>
8370
8371 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8372
8373 <blockquote><p>
8374   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
8375   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
8376   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8377   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8378   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
8379   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
8380   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
8381   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8382   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8383   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8384   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8385   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
8386   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
8387   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
8388   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
8389   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
8390   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
8391   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
8392   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
8393   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
8394   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
8395 </p></blockquote>
8396
8397 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8398
8399 <blockquote><p>
8400   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
8401   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
8402   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
8403 </p></blockquote>
8404
8405 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
8406 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
8407 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
8408 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
8409 the difference somewhat.
8410
8411       </div>
8412       <div class="tags">
8413
8414
8415         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>.
8416
8417
8418       </div>
8419     </div>
8420     <div class="padding"></div>
8421
8422     <div class="entry">
8423       <div class="title">
8424         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8425       </div>
8426       <div class="date">
8427         28th June 2010
8428       </div>
8429       <div class="body">
8430         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
8431 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
8432 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
8433 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
8434 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
8435 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
8436 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
8437 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
8438 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
8439 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
8440
8441 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
8442 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
8443 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
8444 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
8445 released.</p>
8446
8447 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
8448 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
8449 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
8450 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
8451
8452 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
8453 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8454
8455 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
8456 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
8457 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
8458 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
8459 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
8460
8461       </div>
8462       <div class="tags">
8463
8464
8465         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>.
8466
8467
8468       </div>
8469     </div>
8470     <div class="padding"></div>
8471
8472     <div class="entry">
8473       <div class="title">
8474         <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>
8475       </div>
8476       <div class="date">
8477         24th June 2010
8478       </div>
8479       <div class="body">
8480         <p>A while back, I
8481 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
8482 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
8483 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
8484 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
8485
8486 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
8487 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
8488 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
8489 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
8490
8491 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
8492 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
8493 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
8494 Debian Edu.</p>
8495
8496 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
8497 the
8498 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
8499 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
8500 available today from IETF.</p>
8501
8502 <pre>
8503 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
8504 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
8505 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
8506  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
8507         NAME 'dhcpHost'
8508         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
8509 -       SUP top
8510 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
8511         MUST cn
8512         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
8513         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
8514 </pre>
8515
8516 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
8517 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
8518 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
8519
8520 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8521 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8522
8523       </div>
8524       <div class="tags">
8525
8526
8527         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>.
8528
8529
8530       </div>
8531     </div>
8532     <div class="padding"></div>
8533
8534     <div class="entry">
8535       <div class="title">
8536         <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>
8537       </div>
8538       <div class="date">
8539         16th June 2010
8540       </div>
8541       <div class="body">
8542         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
8543 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
8544 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
8545 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
8546 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
8547 this:
8548
8549 <blockquote><pre>
8550 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8551 tasksel --new-install
8552 </pre></blockquote>
8553
8554 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
8555 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
8556 any output what so ever.
8557
8558 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
8559 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
8560 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
8561 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
8562 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
8563 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
8564 code like this:
8565
8566 <blockquote><pre>
8567 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8568 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
8569 $cmd
8570 </pre></blockquote>
8571
8572 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
8573 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
8574 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
8575 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
8576 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
8577 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
8578 installation.</p>
8579
8580 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
8581 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
8582 like this.</p>
8583
8584       </div>
8585       <div class="tags">
8586
8587
8588         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>.
8589
8590
8591       </div>
8592     </div>
8593     <div class="padding"></div>
8594
8595     <div class="entry">
8596       <div class="title">
8597         <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>
8598       </div>
8599       <div class="date">
8600         13th June 2010
8601       </div>
8602       <div class="body">
8603         <p>My
8604 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
8605 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
8606 finally made the upgrade logs available from
8607 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
8608 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
8609 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
8610 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
8611
8612 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
8613 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
8614 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
8615 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
8616 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
8617 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
8618 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
8619 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
8620
8621 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
8622 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
8623 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
8624 too surprising.</p>
8625
8626 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
8627 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
8628 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
8629 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
8630 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
8631 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
8632 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
8633 continue.</p>
8634
8635 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
8636 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
8637   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
8638   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
8639   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
8640   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
8641   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
8642   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8643   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8644   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
8645   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
8646   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
8647   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
8648   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8649   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8650   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8651   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8652   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8653   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
8654   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
8655   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
8656   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
8657   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
8658   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
8659   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
8660   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
8661   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
8662   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
8663   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
8664   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
8665
8666 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
8667
8668 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
8669   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
8670   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
8671   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
8672   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
8673   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
8674   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
8675   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
8676   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
8677   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
8678   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8679   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
8680   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8681   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
8682   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
8683   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
8684   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
8685   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
8686   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
8687   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
8688   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
8689   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
8690   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
8691   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
8692   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8693   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
8694   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
8695   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
8696   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
8697   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8698   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8699   zip</p>
8700
8701 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
8702
8703 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
8704   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
8705   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
8706   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
8707   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
8708   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
8709   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8710   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8711   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
8712   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
8713   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
8714   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
8715   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8716   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8717   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8718   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8719   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8720   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
8721   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
8722   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
8723   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
8724   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
8725   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
8726   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
8727   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
8728   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
8729   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
8730   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
8731
8732 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
8733 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
8734   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8735   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
8736   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
8737   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8738   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
8739   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
8740   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8741   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
8742   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
8743   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
8744   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
8745   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
8746   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
8747   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
8748   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
8749   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
8750   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
8751   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
8752   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
8753   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
8754   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
8755   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
8756   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
8757   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
8758   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
8759   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
8760   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
8761   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
8762   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
8763   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
8764   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
8765   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
8766   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
8767   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8768   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8769   xulrunner-1.9</p>
8770
8771
8772       </div>
8773       <div class="tags">
8774
8775
8776         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>.
8777
8778
8779       </div>
8780     </div>
8781     <div class="padding"></div>
8782
8783     <div class="entry">
8784       <div class="title">
8785         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
8786       </div>
8787       <div class="date">
8788         11th June 2010
8789       </div>
8790       <div class="body">
8791         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
8792 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
8793 have been discovered and reported in the process
8794 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
8795 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
8796 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
8797 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
8798 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
8799
8800 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
8801 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
8802 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
8803 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
8804 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
8805 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
8806
8807 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
8808 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
8809 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
8810 is created.  The bug report
8811 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
8812 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
8813 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
8814 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
8815 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
8816 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
8817 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
8818 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
8819 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
8820 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
8821 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
8822 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
8823 Debian Squeeze.</p>
8824
8825 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
8826 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
8827 trick:</p>
8828
8829 <blockquote><pre>
8830 #!/bin/sh
8831 set -ex
8832
8833 if [ "$1" ] ; then
8834     desktop=$1
8835 else
8836     desktop=gnome
8837 fi
8838
8839 from=lenny
8840 to=squeeze
8841
8842 exec &lt; /dev/null
8843 unset LANG
8844 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
8845 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
8846 fuser -mv .
8847 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
8848 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
8849 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
8850 #!/bin/sh
8851 exit 101
8852 EOF
8853 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
8854 exit_cleanup() {
8855     umount $tmpdir/proc
8856 }
8857 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
8858 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
8859 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
8860
8861 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
8862
8863 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
8864 # to return the correct answers.
8865 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
8866     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
8867
8868 # Include the desktop and laptop task
8869 for test in desktop laptop ; do
8870     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
8871 #!/bin/sh
8872 exit 2
8873 EOF
8874     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
8875 done
8876
8877 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8878 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
8879 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
8880 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
8881
8882 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
8883 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
8884 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
8885 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
8886 fuser -mv
8887 </pre></blockquote>
8888
8889 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
8890 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
8891 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
8892 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
8893 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
8894 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
8895
8896 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
8897 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
8898 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
8899 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
8900 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
8901 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
8902 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
8903
8904 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
8905 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
8906 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
8907 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
8908 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
8909 packages.</p>
8910
8911       </div>
8912       <div class="tags">
8913
8914
8915         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>.
8916
8917
8918       </div>
8919     </div>
8920     <div class="padding"></div>
8921
8922     <div class="entry">
8923       <div class="title">
8924         <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>
8925       </div>
8926       <div class="date">
8927          6th June 2010
8928       </div>
8929       <div class="body">
8930         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
8931 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
8932 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
8933 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
8934 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
8935 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
8936 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
8937
8938 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
8939 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
8940 COLUMNS):</p>
8941
8942 <blockquote><pre>
8943 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
8944 previous=N
8945 PREVLEVEL=
8946 RUNLEVEL=
8947 runlevel=S
8948 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
8949 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
8950 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
8951 </pre></blockquote>
8952
8953 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
8954 script.</p>
8955
8956 <blockquote><pre>
8957 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
8958 previous=N
8959 PREVLEVEL=N
8960 RUNLEVEL=S
8961 runlevel=S
8962 </pre></blockquote>
8963
8964 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
8965 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
8966 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
8967
8968 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
8969 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
8970 choice.</p>
8971
8972       </div>
8973       <div class="tags">
8974
8975
8976         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>.
8977
8978
8979       </div>
8980     </div>
8981     <div class="padding"></div>
8982
8983     <div class="entry">
8984       <div class="title">
8985         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
8986       </div>
8987       <div class="date">
8988          6th June 2010
8989       </div>
8990       <div class="body">
8991         <p>Via the
8992 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
8993 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
8994 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
8995 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
8996 following the standards wars of today.</p>
8997
8998       </div>
8999       <div class="tags">
9000
9001
9002         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>.
9003
9004
9005       </div>
9006     </div>
9007     <div class="padding"></div>
9008
9009     <div class="entry">
9010       <div class="title">
9011         <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>
9012       </div>
9013       <div class="date">
9014          3rd June 2010
9015       </div>
9016       <div class="body">
9017         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
9018 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
9019 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
9020 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
9021 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
9022
9023 <blockquote><pre>
9024 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
9025   vendor                    count
9026   Dell Computer Corporation     1
9027     PowerEdge 1750              1
9028   IBM                           1
9029     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
9030   Intel                         2
9031   [no-dmi-info]                 3
9032 maintainer:~#
9033 </pre></blockquote>
9034
9035 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
9036 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
9037 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
9038 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
9039 option to list the individual machines.</p>
9040
9041 <p>A larger list is
9042 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
9043 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
9044 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
9045 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
9046 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
9047 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
9048 collector.</p>
9049
9050       </div>
9051       <div class="tags">
9052
9053
9054         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>.
9055
9056
9057       </div>
9058     </div>
9059     <div class="padding"></div>
9060
9061     <div class="entry">
9062       <div class="title">
9063         <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>
9064       </div>
9065       <div class="date">
9066          1st June 2010
9067       </div>
9068       <div class="body">
9069         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
9070 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
9071 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
9072 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
9073 wait.</p>
9074
9075 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
9076 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
9077 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
9078 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
9079 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
9080 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
9081
9082 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
9083 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
9084 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
9085 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
9086 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
9087 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
9088 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
9089 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
9090
9091 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
9092
9093       </div>
9094       <div class="tags">
9095
9096
9097         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>.
9098
9099
9100       </div>
9101     </div>
9102     <div class="padding"></div>
9103
9104     <div class="entry">
9105       <div class="title">
9106         <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>
9107       </div>
9108       <div class="date">
9109         27th May 2010
9110       </div>
9111       <div class="body">
9112         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
9113 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
9114 issues are known and should be solved:
9115
9116 <p><ul>
9117
9118 <li>The wicd package seen to
9119 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
9120 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
9121 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
9122 seem to be on the case.</li>
9123
9124 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
9125 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
9126 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
9127 maintainer is on the case.</li>
9128
9129 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
9130 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
9131 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
9132 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
9133 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
9134 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
9135 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
9136 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
9137
9138 </ul></p>
9139
9140 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
9141 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
9142 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
9143 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
9144
9145 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9146 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9147 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9148 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9149
9150 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
9151
9152       </div>
9153       <div class="tags">
9154
9155
9156         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>.
9157
9158
9159       </div>
9160     </div>
9161     <div class="padding"></div>
9162
9163     <div class="entry">
9164       <div class="title">
9165         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
9166       </div>
9167       <div class="date">
9168         22nd May 2010
9169       </div>
9170       <div class="body">
9171         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
9172 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
9173 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
9174 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
9175
9176 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
9177 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
9178 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
9179 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
9180 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
9181 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
9182 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
9183 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
9184 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
9185 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
9186 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
9187 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
9188 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
9189 going to work.</p>
9190
9191 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
9192 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
9193 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
9194 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
9195 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
9196 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
9197 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
9198 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
9199 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
9200 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
9201 Edu.</p>
9202
9203 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
9204 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
9205 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
9206 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
9207 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
9208 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
9209
9210 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
9211 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
9212
9213       </div>
9214       <div class="tags">
9215
9216
9217         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>.
9218
9219
9220       </div>
9221     </div>
9222     <div class="padding"></div>
9223
9224     <div class="entry">
9225       <div class="title">
9226         <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>
9227       </div>
9228       <div class="date">
9229         14th May 2010
9230       </div>
9231       <div class="body">
9232         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
9233 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
9234 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
9235 expected, if I am to believe the
9236 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9237 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
9238 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
9239 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
9240 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
9241 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
9242 version.</p>
9243
9244 More information about
9245 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9246 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
9247 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
9248 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
9249
9250 <blockquote><pre>
9251 CONCURRENCY=none
9252 </pre></blockquote>
9253
9254 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9255 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9256 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9257 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9258
9259       </div>
9260       <div class="tags">
9261
9262
9263         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>.
9264
9265
9266       </div>
9267     </div>
9268     <div class="padding"></div>
9269
9270     <div class="entry">
9271       <div class="title">
9272         <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>
9273       </div>
9274       <div class="date">
9275         14th May 2010
9276       </div>
9277       <div class="body">
9278         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
9279 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
9280 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
9281 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
9282 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
9283 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
9284 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
9285 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
9286
9287 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
9288 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
9289 this on the collector host:</p>
9290
9291 <blockquote><pre>
9292 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
9293 </pre></blockquote>
9294
9295 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
9296 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
9297
9298 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
9299 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
9300 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
9301 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
9302 written yet.</p>
9303
9304       </div>
9305       <div class="tags">
9306
9307
9308         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>.
9309
9310
9311       </div>
9312     </div>
9313     <div class="padding"></div>
9314
9315     <div class="entry">
9316       <div class="title">
9317         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
9318       </div>
9319       <div class="date">
9320         13th May 2010
9321       </div>
9322       <div class="body">
9323         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
9324 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
9325 has been
9326 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
9327
9328 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
9329 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
9330 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
9331 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
9332 based boot system.  Tollef is
9333 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
9334 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
9335 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
9336 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
9337 at the moment do not.</p>
9338
9339 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
9340 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
9341 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
9342 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
9343 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
9344 way forward.</p>
9345
9346 <p>In the mean time, based on the
9347 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9348 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
9349 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
9350 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
9351 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
9352 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
9353 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
9354 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
9355
9356       </div>
9357       <div class="tags">
9358
9359
9360         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>.
9361
9362
9363       </div>
9364     </div>
9365     <div class="padding"></div>
9366
9367     <div class="entry">
9368       <div class="title">
9369         <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>
9370       </div>
9371       <div class="date">
9372          6th May 2010
9373       </div>
9374       <div class="body">
9375         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
9376 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
9377 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
9378 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
9379 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9380 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
9381 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
9382
9383 <blockquote><pre>
9384 CONCURRENCY=makefile
9385 </pre></blockquote>
9386
9387 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
9388 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
9389 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
9390 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
9391 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
9392 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
9393 make this happen.</p>
9394
9395 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
9396 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
9397 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
9398 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
9399 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
9400
9401 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
9402 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
9403 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
9404 fix the remaining issues.</p>
9405
9406 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9407 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9408 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9409 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9410
9411       </div>
9412       <div class="tags">
9413
9414
9415         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>.
9416
9417
9418       </div>
9419     </div>
9420     <div class="padding"></div>
9421
9422     <div class="entry">
9423       <div class="title">
9424         <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>
9425       </div>
9426       <div class="date">
9427         27th July 2009
9428       </div>
9429       <div class="body">
9430         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
9431 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
9432 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
9433 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
9434 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
9435 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
9436 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
9437
9438 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
9439 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
9440 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
9441
9442       </div>
9443       <div class="tags">
9444
9445
9446         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>.
9447
9448
9449       </div>
9450     </div>
9451     <div class="padding"></div>
9452
9453     <div class="entry">
9454       <div class="title">
9455         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
9456       </div>
9457       <div class="date">
9458         22nd July 2009
9459       </div>
9460       <div class="body">
9461         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
9462 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
9463 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
9464 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
9465 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
9466 the package up to date.</p>
9467
9468 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
9469 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
9470 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
9471 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
9472 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
9473 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
9474 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
9475 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
9476 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
9477 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
9478 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
9479 working on the future release.</p>
9480
9481 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
9482 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
9483
9484       </div>
9485       <div class="tags">
9486
9487
9488         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>.
9489
9490
9491       </div>
9492     </div>
9493     <div class="padding"></div>
9494
9495     <div class="entry">
9496       <div class="title">
9497         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
9498       </div>
9499       <div class="date">
9500         24th June 2009
9501       </div>
9502       <div class="body">
9503         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
9504 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
9505 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
9506 funded
9507 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
9508 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
9509 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
9510 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
9511 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
9512 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
9513
9514 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
9515 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
9516 boot:</p>
9517
9518 <ul>
9519
9520 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
9521
9522 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
9523    clock is in UTC.</li>
9524
9525 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
9526    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9527    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
9528
9529 </ul>
9530
9531 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
9532 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
9533 Villegas</a>.
9534
9535 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
9536 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
9537 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
9538 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
9539 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
9540 using this.</p>
9541
9542 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
9543 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
9544 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
9545 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
9546 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
9547 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
9548 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
9549
9550       </div>
9551       <div class="tags">
9552
9553
9554         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>.
9555
9556
9557       </div>
9558     </div>
9559     <div class="padding"></div>
9560
9561     <div class="entry">
9562       <div class="title">
9563         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
9564       </div>
9565       <div class="date">
9566         17th May 2009
9567       </div>
9568       <div class="body">
9569         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
9570 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
9571 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
9572 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
9573 dager siden kom
9574 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
9575 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
9576 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
9577 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
9578 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
9579
9580 <blockquote>
9581 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
9582 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
9583 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
9584 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
9585 </blockquote>
9586
9587 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
9588 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
9589 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
9590 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
9591 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
9592
9593 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
9594 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
9595 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
9596
9597       </div>
9598       <div class="tags">
9599
9600
9601         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>.
9602
9603
9604       </div>
9605     </div>
9606     <div class="padding"></div>
9607
9608     <div class="entry">
9609       <div class="title">
9610         <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>
9611       </div>
9612       <div class="date">
9613          7th May 2009
9614       </div>
9615       <div class="body">
9616         <p>Kom over
9617 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
9618 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
9619 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
9620 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
9621 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
9622 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
9623 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
9624
9625       </div>
9626       <div class="tags">
9627
9628
9629         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>.
9630
9631
9632       </div>
9633     </div>
9634     <div class="padding"></div>
9635
9636     <div class="entry">
9637       <div class="title">
9638         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
9639       </div>
9640       <div class="date">
9641          2nd May 2009
9642       </div>
9643       <div class="body">
9644         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
9645 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
9646 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
9647 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
9648 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
9649 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
9650 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
9651 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
9652 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
9653 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
9654 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
9655 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
9656 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
9657 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
9658 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
9659 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
9660 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
9661 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
9662 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
9663 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
9664
9665 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
9666 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
9667 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
9668 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
9669 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
9670 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
9671 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
9672 betydelige.</p>
9673
9674       </div>
9675       <div class="tags">
9676
9677
9678         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>.
9679
9680
9681       </div>
9682     </div>
9683     <div class="padding"></div>
9684
9685     <div class="entry">
9686       <div class="title">
9687         <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>
9688       </div>
9689       <div class="date">
9690          2nd May 2009
9691       </div>
9692       <div class="body">
9693         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
9694 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
9695 do not yet know them.</p>
9696
9697 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
9698 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
9699 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
9700 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
9701 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
9702 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
9703 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
9704 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
9705 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
9706 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
9707 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
9708
9709 <p>The second one is
9710 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
9711 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
9712 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
9713 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
9714 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
9715 and the company behind it is running
9716 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
9717 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
9718 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
9719 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
9720 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
9721 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
9722 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
9723 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
9724
9725 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
9726 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
9727 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
9728 surrounded by today.</p>
9729
9730       </div>
9731       <div class="tags">
9732
9733
9734         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>.
9735
9736
9737       </div>
9738     </div>
9739     <div class="padding"></div>
9740
9741     <div class="entry">
9742       <div class="title">
9743         <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>
9744       </div>
9745       <div class="date">
9746         28th April 2009
9747       </div>
9748       <div class="body">
9749         <p>Julien Blache
9750 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
9751 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
9752 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
9753 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
9754 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
9755 properties.</p>
9756
9757       </div>
9758       <div class="tags">
9759
9760
9761         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>.
9762
9763
9764       </div>
9765     </div>
9766     <div class="padding"></div>
9767
9768     <div class="entry">
9769       <div class="title">
9770         <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>
9771       </div>
9772       <div class="date">
9773         30th March 2009
9774       </div>
9775       <div class="body">
9776         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
9777 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
9778 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
9779 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
9780 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
9781 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
9782 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
9783 application.</p>
9784
9785 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
9786 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
9787 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
9788 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
9789 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
9790 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
9791 blocked from doing so.</p>
9792
9793 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
9794 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
9795 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
9796 requirements change.</p>
9797
9798 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
9799 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
9800 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
9801
9802       </div>
9803       <div class="tags">
9804
9805
9806         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>.
9807
9808
9809       </div>
9810     </div>
9811     <div class="padding"></div>
9812
9813     <div class="entry">
9814       <div class="title">
9815         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
9816       </div>
9817       <div class="date">
9818         29th March 2009
9819       </div>
9820       <div class="body">
9821         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
9822 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
9823 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
9824 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
9825 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
9826 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
9827 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
9828 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
9829 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
9830 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
9831 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
9832 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
9833 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
9834 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
9835 now. :)</p>
9836
9837       </div>
9838       <div class="tags">
9839
9840
9841         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>.
9842
9843
9844       </div>
9845     </div>
9846     <div class="padding"></div>
9847
9848     <div class="entry">
9849       <div class="title">
9850         <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>
9851       </div>
9852       <div class="date">
9853         29th March 2009
9854       </div>
9855       <div class="body">
9856         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
9857 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
9858 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
9859 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
9860 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
9861 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
9862
9863 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
9864 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
9865 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
9866 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
9867 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
9868 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
9869 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
9870 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
9871 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
9872 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
9873 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
9874 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
9875 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
9876
9877 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
9878 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
9879 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
9880 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
9881
9882 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
9883 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
9884
9885 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
9886 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
9887 new IETF work group?</p>
9888
9889       </div>
9890       <div class="tags">
9891
9892
9893         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>.
9894
9895
9896       </div>
9897     </div>
9898     <div class="padding"></div>
9899
9900     <div class="entry">
9901       <div class="title">
9902         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
9903       </div>
9904       <div class="date">
9905         15th February 2009
9906       </div>
9907       <div class="body">
9908         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
9909 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
9910 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
9911 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
9912 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
9913 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
9914 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
9915 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
9916 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
9917 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
9918 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
9919 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
9920
9921       </div>
9922       <div class="tags">
9923
9924
9925         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>.
9926
9927
9928       </div>
9929     </div>
9930     <div class="padding"></div>
9931
9932     <div class="entry">
9933       <div class="title">
9934         <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>
9935       </div>
9936       <div class="date">
9937          7th December 2008
9938       </div>
9939       <div class="body">
9940         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
9941 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
9942 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
9943 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
9944 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
9945 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
9946 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
9947 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
9948
9949 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
9950 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
9951 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
9952 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
9953 of these cards.</p>
9954
9955       </div>
9956       <div class="tags">
9957
9958
9959         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>.
9960
9961
9962       </div>
9963     </div>
9964     <div class="padding"></div>
9965
9966     <div class="entry">
9967       <div class="title">
9968         <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>
9969       </div>
9970       <div class="date">
9971         25th November 2008
9972       </div>
9973       <div class="body">
9974         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
9975 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
9976 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
9977 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
9978 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
9979 notes are available on
9980 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
9981 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
9982 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
9983 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
9984 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
9985 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
9986 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
9987 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
9988 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
9989
9990 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
9991 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
9992
9993       </div>
9994       <div class="tags">
9995
9996
9997         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>.
9998
9999
10000       </div>
10001     </div>
10002     <div class="padding"></div>
10003
10004     <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>
10005     <div id="sidebar">
10006
10007
10008
10009 <h2>Archive</h2>
10010 <ul>
10011
10012 <li>2016
10013 <ul>
10014
10015 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
10016
10017 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
10018
10019 </ul></li>
10020
10021 <li>2015
10022 <ul>
10023
10024 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
10025
10026 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
10027
10028 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
10029
10030 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
10031
10032 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
10033
10034 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
10035
10036 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
10037
10038 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
10039
10040 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
10041
10042 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
10043
10044 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
10045
10046 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10047
10048 </ul></li>
10049
10050 <li>2014
10051 <ul>
10052
10053 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
10054
10055 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
10056
10057 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
10058
10059 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
10060
10061 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
10062
10063 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
10064
10065 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
10066
10067 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
10068
10069 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
10070
10071 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
10072
10073 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10074
10075 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
10076
10077 </ul></li>
10078
10079 <li>2013
10080 <ul>
10081
10082 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
10083
10084 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
10085
10086 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
10087
10088 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
10089
10090 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10091
10092 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
10093
10094 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
10095
10096 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
10097
10098 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
10099
10100 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
10101
10102 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
10103
10104 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10105
10106 </ul></li>
10107
10108 <li>2012
10109 <ul>
10110
10111 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
10112
10113 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
10114
10115 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
10116
10117 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
10118
10119 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
10120
10121 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
10122
10123 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
10124
10125 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
10126
10127 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
10128
10129 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
10130
10131 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
10132
10133 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
10134
10135 </ul></li>
10136
10137 <li>2011
10138 <ul>
10139
10140 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
10141
10142 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
10143
10144 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
10145
10146 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
10147
10148 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
10149
10150 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
10151
10152 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
10153
10154 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
10155
10156 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
10157
10158 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
10159
10160 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10161
10162 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
10163
10164 </ul></li>
10165
10166 <li>2010
10167 <ul>
10168
10169 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
10170
10171 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
10172
10173 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
10174
10175 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
10176
10177 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10178
10179 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
10180
10181 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
10182
10183 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
10184
10185 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
10186
10187 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
10188
10189 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
10190
10191 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
10192
10193 </ul></li>
10194
10195 <li>2009
10196 <ul>
10197
10198 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
10199
10200 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
10201
10202 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
10203
10204 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
10205
10206 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10207
10208 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
10209
10210 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
10211
10212 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
10213
10214 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
10215
10216 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
10217
10218 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10219
10220 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10221
10222 </ul></li>
10223
10224 <li>2008
10225 <ul>
10226
10227 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
10228
10229 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
10230
10231 </ul></li>
10232
10233 </ul>
10234
10235
10236
10237 <h2>Tags</h2>
10238 <ul>
10239
10240  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
10241
10242  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
10243
10244  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
10245
10246  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
10247
10248  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
10249
10250  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
10251
10252  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
10253
10254  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
10255
10256  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (120)</a></li>
10257
10258  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (154)</a></li>
10259
10260  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
10261
10262  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
10263
10264  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (20)</a></li>
10265
10266  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
10267
10268  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (302)</a></li>
10269
10270  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
10271
10272  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
10273
10274  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (25)</a></li>
10275
10276  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
10277
10278  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
10279
10280  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
10281
10282  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
10283
10284  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (11)</a></li>
10285
10286  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
10287
10288  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
10289
10290  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
10291
10292  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
10293
10294  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
10295
10296  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
10297
10298  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (37)</a></li>
10299
10300  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (7)</a></li>
10301
10302  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (273)</a></li>
10303
10304  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
10305
10306  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (22)</a></li>
10307
10308  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
10309
10310  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (58)</a></li>
10311
10312  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (92)</a></li>
10313
10314  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
10315
10316  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
10317
10318  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
10319
10320  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
10321
10322  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
10323
10324  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
10325
10326  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
10327
10328  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
10329
10330  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (45)</a></li>
10331
10332  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
10333
10334  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
10335
10336  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
10337
10338  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
10339
10340  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
10341
10342  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (36)</a></li>
10343
10344  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
10345
10346  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
10347
10348  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
10349
10350  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (55)</a></li>
10351
10352  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
10353
10354  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
10355
10356 </ul>
10357
10358
10359     </div>
10360     <p style="text-align: right">
10361  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
10362 </p>
10363
10364   </body>
10365 </html>