blog/tags/english/index.html

   1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   2           "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
   3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr">
   4   <head>
   5     <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Entries Tagged english</title>
   7     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/style.css" />
   8     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/vim.css" />
   9     <link rel="alternate" title="RSS Feed" href="english.rss" type="application/rss+xml" />
  10   </head>
  11   <body>
  12     <div class="title">
  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 "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         15th March 2016
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
  32 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
  33 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
  34 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
  35 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
  36 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
  37 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
  38 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
  39 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
  40 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
  41 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
  42
  43 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
  44 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
  45 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
  46 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
  47 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
  48 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
  49 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
  50 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
  51 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
  52 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
  53 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
  54
  55 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
  56
  57 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
  58 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
  59 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
  60 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
  61 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
  62 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
  63
  64 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
  65 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
  66 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
  67 and graphing.</p>
  68
  69 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
  70 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
  71 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
  72 on
  73 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
  74 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
  75
  76       </div>
  77       <div class="tags">
  78
  79
  80         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>.
  81
  82
  83       </div>
  84     </div>
  85     <div class="padding"></div>
  86
  87     <div class="entry">
  88       <div class="title">
  89         <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>
  90       </div>
  91       <div class="date">
  92         19th February 2016
  93       </div>
  94       <div class="body">
  95         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
  96 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
  97 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
  98 the code in the package in question, preferably in
  99 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
 100 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
 101
 102 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
 103 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
 104 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
 105 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
 106 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
 107 out what was wrong with
 108 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
 109 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
 110 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
 111 semi-automatically.</p>
 112
 113 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
 114 file based on the code in the source package,
 115 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
 116 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
 117 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
 118 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
 119 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
 120 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
 121 option in
 122 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
 123 blog posts from 2014</a>.
 124
 125 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
 126
 127 <p><pre>
 128 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
 129 </pre></p>
 130
 131 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
 132 this might not be the best option.</p>
 133
 134 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
 135 this approach in
 136 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
 137 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
 138 dpkg-copyright' option:
 139
 140 <p><pre>
 141 cme update dpkg-copyright
 142 </pre></p>
 143
 144 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
 145 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
 146
 147 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
 148 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
 149 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
 150 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
 151 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
 152 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
 153 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
 154 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
 155 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
 156 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
 157
 158 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
 159 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
 160 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
 161 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
 162
 163 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
 164 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
 165 planet.debian.org.</p>
 166
 167 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 168 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 169 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 170
 171 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
 172 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
 173
 174 <p><pre>
 175 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
 176   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
 177 </pre></p>
 178
 179 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
 180 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
 181 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
 182 with my packages in the future.</p>
 183
 184 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
 185 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
 186 command line.</p>
 187
 188       </div>
 189       <div class="tags">
 190
 191
 192         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>.
 193
 194
 195       </div>
 196     </div>
 197     <div class="padding"></div>
 198
 199     <div class="entry">
 200       <div class="title">
 201         <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>
 202       </div>
 203       <div class="date">
 204          4th February 2016
 205       </div>
 206       <div class="body">
 207         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
 208 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
 209 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
 210 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
 211 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
 212 about. :)</p>
 213
 214 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
 215 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
 216 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
 217 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
 218 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
 219 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
 220
 221 <blockquote><pre>
 222 % apt install appstream
 223 [...]
 224 % apt update
 225 [...]
 226 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
 227   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
 228 firmware-qlogic
 229 %
 230 </pre></blockquote>
 231
 232 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
 233 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
 234 a way appstream can use.</p>
 235
 236 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
 237 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
 238 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
 239 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
 240 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
 241 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
 242
 243 <blockquote><pre>
 244 % apt install appstream
 245 [...]
 246 % apt update
 247 [...]
 248 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
 249   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
 250 bkchem
 251 phototonic
 252 inkscape
 253 shutter
 254 tetzle
 255 geeqie
 256 xia
 257 pinta
 258 gthumb
 259 karbon
 260 comix
 261 mirage
 262 viewnior
 263 postr
 264 ristretto
 265 kolourpaint4
 266 eog
 267 eom
 268 gimagereader
 269 midori
 270 %
 271 </pre></blockquote>
 272
 273 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
 274 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
 275
 276       </div>
 277       <div class="tags">
 278
 279
 280         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>.
 281
 282
 283       </div>
 284     </div>
 285     <div class="padding"></div>
 286
 287     <div class="entry">
 288       <div class="title">
 289         <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>
 290       </div>
 291       <div class="date">
 292         24th January 2016
 293       </div>
 294       <div class="body">
 295         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
 296 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
 297 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
 298 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
 299 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
 300 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
 301 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
 302 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
 303 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
 304 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
 305 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
 306 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
 307 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
 308 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
 309 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
 310 entities.</p>
 311
 312 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
 313
 314 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
 315 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
 316 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
 317 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
 318 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
 319 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
 320 tool to do so is called
 321 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
 322 discovered it when I read
 323 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
 324 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
 325 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
 326 The python program was in Debian, but
 327 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
 328 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
 329 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
 330 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
 331 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
 332 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
 333 are now included
 334 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
 335
 336 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
 337 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
 338 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
 339 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
 340 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
 341 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
 342 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
 343 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
 344 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
 345 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
 346 about yourself with the services.</p>
 347
 348 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
 349 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
 350 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
 351 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
 352 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
 353 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
 354 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
 355 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
 356 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
 357 things.  A similar technique have been
 358 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
 359 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
 360 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
 361 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
 362 public.</p>
 363
 364 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
 365 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
 366 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
 367 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
 368
 369 <p>(I have uploaded
 370 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
 371 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
 372 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
 373
 374       </div>
 375       <div class="tags">
 376
 377
 378         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>.
 379
 380
 381       </div>
 382     </div>
 383     <div class="padding"></div>
 384
 385     <div class="entry">
 386       <div class="title">
 387         <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>
 388       </div>
 389       <div class="date">
 390         15th January 2016
 391       </div>
 392       <div class="body">
 393         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
 394 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
 395 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
 396 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
 397 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
 398 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
 399 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
 400 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
 401 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
 402 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
 403 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
 404 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
 405 was not the first to propose this, as the
 406 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
 407 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
 408 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
 409 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
 410
 411 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
 412 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
 413 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
 414 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
 415 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
 416
 417 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
 418 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
 419 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
 420 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
 421 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
 422 done in /etc/.</p>
 423
 424 <blockquote><pre>
 425 apt install apt-transport-tor
 426 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
 427 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
 428 </pre></blockquote>
 429
 430 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
 431 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
 432 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
 433 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
 434
 435 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
 436 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
 437 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
 438 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
 439 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
 440 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
 441
 442 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
 443 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
 444 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
 445 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
 446 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
 447
 448 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
 449 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
 450 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
 451 system.</p>
 452
 453       </div>
 454       <div class="tags">
 455
 456
 457         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>.
 458
 459
 460       </div>
 461     </div>
 462     <div class="padding"></div>
 463
 464     <div class="entry">
 465       <div class="title">
 466         <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>
 467       </div>
 468       <div class="date">
 469         23rd December 2015
 470       </div>
 471       <div class="body">
 472         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
 473 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
 474 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
 475 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
 476 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
 477 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
 478
 479 <p>A few days I came across
 480 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
 481 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
 482 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
 483 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
 484 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
 485 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
 486 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
 487 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
 488 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
 489 discovered the developer
 490 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
 491 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
 492 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
 493 archive.</p>
 494
 495 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
 496 it into Debian, where it currently
 497 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
 498 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
 499
 500 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
 501 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
 502 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
 503 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
 504 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
 505 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
 506 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
 507 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
 508 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
 509 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
 510 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
 511 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
 512
 513 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
 514 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
 515 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
 516 package show up in unstable.</p>
 517
 518       </div>
 519       <div class="tags">
 520
 521
 522         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>.
 523
 524
 525       </div>
 526     </div>
 527     <div class="padding"></div>
 528
 529     <div class="entry">
 530       <div class="title">
 531         <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>
 532       </div>
 533       <div class="date">
 534         20th December 2015
 535       </div>
 536       <div class="body">
 537         <p>Around three years ago, I created
 538 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
 539 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
 540 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
 541 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
 542 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
 543 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
 544 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
 545 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
 546 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
 547 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
 548 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
 549 with.</p>
 550
 551 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
 552 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
 553 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
 554 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
 555 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
 556 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
 557 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
 558 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
 559 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
 560 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
 561 Debian version of appstream.</p>
 562
 563 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
 564 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
 565 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
 566 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
 567 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
 568 how do add the required
 569 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
 570 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
 571 this content:</p>
 572
 573 <blockquote><pre>
 574 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
 575 &lt;component&gt;
 576   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
 577   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
 578   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
 579   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
 580   &lt;description&gt;
 581     &lt;p&gt;
 582       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
 583       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
 584       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
 585       launcher.
 586     &lt;/p&gt;
 587   &lt;/description&gt;
 588   &lt;provides&gt;
 589     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
 590   &lt;/provides&gt;
 591 &lt;/component&gt;
 592 </pre></blockquote>
 593
 594 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
 595 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
 596 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
 597 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
 598 0202.</p>
 599
 600 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
 601 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
 602 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
 603 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
 604 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
 605 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
 606 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
 607 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
 608
 609 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
 610 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
 611 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
 612 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
 613 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
 614
 615 <blockquote><pre>
 616 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
 617 </pre></blockquote>
 618
 619 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
 620 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
 621 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
 622 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
 623 question.</p>
 624
 625 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
 626 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
 627
 628 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
 629 try running this command on the command line:</p>
 630
 631 <blockquote><pre>
 632 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
 633 </pre></blockquote>
 634
 635 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
 636 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
 637 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
 638
 639       </div>
 640       <div class="tags">
 641
 642
 643         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>.
 644
 645
 646       </div>
 647     </div>
 648     <div class="padding"></div>
 649
 650     <div class="entry">
 651       <div class="title">
 652         <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>
 653       </div>
 654       <div class="date">
 655         30th November 2015
 656       </div>
 657       <div class="body">
 658         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
 659 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
 660 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
 661 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
 662 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
 663
 664 <blockquote>
 665
 666 <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>
 667
 668 <blockquote>
 669 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
 670
 671 The first step is to choose a
 672 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
 673 code.<br/>
 674
 675 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
 676 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
 677
 678 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
 679 work<br/>
 680
 681 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
 682 </blockquote>
 683
 684 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
 685 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
 686 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
 687 0x57</a></small></p>
 688
 689 <p>As the Debian Website
 690 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
 691 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
 692 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
 693 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
 694 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
 695 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
 696 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
 697 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
 698 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
 699 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
 700 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
 701 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
 702 Freedom">FaiF</a>
 703 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
 704 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
 705 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
 706 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
 707 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
 708 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
 709 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
 710 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
 711 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
 712 In March the SFC supported a
 713 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
 714 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
 715 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
 716 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
 717 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
 718 conferences
 719 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
 720 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
 721 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
 722 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
 723 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
 724 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
 725 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
 726 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
 727 Software.</p>
 728
 729 <p>If you support Free Software,
 730 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
 731 what the SFC do, agree with their
 732 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
 733 principles</a>, are happy about their
 734 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
 735 work on a project that is an SFC
 736 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
 737 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
 738 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
 739 Allan Webber</a>,
 740 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
 741 Smith</a>,
 742 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
 743 Bacon</a>, myself and
 744 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
 745 becoming a
 746 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
 747 next week your donation will be
 748 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
 749 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
 750 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
 751 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
 752 social media accounts.</p>
 753
 754 </blockquote>
 755
 756 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
 757 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
 758 supporter too?</p>
 759
 760       </div>
 761       <div class="tags">
 762
 763
 764         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>.
 765
 766
 767       </div>
 768     </div>
 769     <div class="padding"></div>
 770
 771     <div class="entry">
 772       <div class="title">
 773         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
 774       </div>
 775       <div class="date">
 776         17th November 2015
 777       </div>
 778       <div class="body">
 779         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
 780 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
 781 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
 782 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
 783 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
 784 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
 785 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
 786 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
 787 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
 788 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
 789
 790 <pre>
 791 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
 792       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
 793 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
 794 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
 795 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 796 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 797 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 798 </pre>
 799
 800 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
 801 my old key.</p>
 802
 803 <p>If you signed my old key
 804 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
 805 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
 806 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
 807 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
 808
 809       </div>
 810       <div class="tags">
 811
 812
 813         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>.
 814
 815
 816       </div>
 817     </div>
 818     <div class="padding"></div>
 819
 820     <div class="entry">
 821       <div class="title">
 822         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Pentagon_deciding_the_Norwegian_negotiating_position_on_Internet_governance_.html">Is Pentagon deciding the Norwegian negotiating position on Internet governance?</a>
 823       </div>
 824       <div class="date">
 825          3rd November 2015
 826       </div>
 827       <div class="body">
 828         <p>In Norway, all government offices are required by law to keep a
 829 list of every document or letter arriving and leaving their offices.
 830 Internal notes should also be documented.  The document list (called a mail
 831 journal - "postjournal" in Norwegian) is public information and thanks
 832 to the Norwegian Freedom of Information Act (Offentleglova) the mail
 833 journal is available for everyone.  Most offices even publish the mail
 834 journal on their web pages, as PDFs or tables in web pages.  The state-level offices even have a shared web based search service (called
 835 <a href="https://www.oep.no/">Offentlig Elektronisk Postjournal -
 836 OEP</a>) to make it possible to search the entries in the list.  Not
 837 all journal entries show up on OEP, and the search service is hard to
 838 use, but OEP does make it easier to find at least some interesting
 839 journal entries .</p>
 840
 841 <p>In 2012 I came across a document in the mail journal for the
 842 Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications on OEP that
 843 piqued my interest.  The title of the document was
 844 "<a href="https://www.oep.no/search/resultSingle.html?journalPostId=4192362">Internet
 845 Governance and how it affects national security</a>" (Norwegian:
 846 "Internet Governance og påvirkning på nasjonal sikkerhet").  The
 847 document date was 2012-05-22, and it was said to be sent from the
 848 "Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations".  I asked for a
 849 copy, but my request was rejected with a reference to a legal clause said to authorize them to reject it
 850 (<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20,
 851 letter c</a>) and an explanation that the document was exempt because
 852 of foreign policy interests as it contained information related to the
 853 Norwegian negotiating position, negotiating strategies or similar.  I
 854 was told the information in the document related to the ongoing
 855 negotiation in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).  The
 856 explanation made sense to me in early January 2013, as a ITU
 857 conference in Dubay discussing Internet Governance
 858 (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union#World_Conference_on_International_Telecommunications_2012_.28WCIT-12.29">World
 859 Conference on International Telecommunications - WCIT-12</a>) had just
 860 ended,
 861 <a href="http://www.digi.no/kommentarer/2012/12/18/tvil-om-usas-rolle-pa-teletoppmote">reportedly
 862 in chaos</a> when USA walked out of the negotiations and 25 countries
 863 including Norway refused to sign the new treaty.  It seemed
 864 reasonable to believe talks were still going on a few weeks later.
 865 Norway was represented at the ITU meeting by two authorities, the
 866 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/">Norwegian Communications Authority</a>
 867 and the <a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dep/sd/">Ministry of
 868 Transport and Communications</a>.  This might be the reason the letter
 869 was sent to the ministry.  As I was unable to find the document in the
 870 mail journal of any Norwegian UN mission, I asked the ministry who had
 871 sent the document to the ministry, and was told that it was the Deputy
 872 Permanent Representative with the Permanent Mission of Norway in
 873 Geneva.</p>
 874
 875 <p>Three years later, I was still curious about the content of that
 876 document, and again asked for a copy, believing the negotiation was
 877 over now.  This time
 878 <a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/kopi_av_dokumenter_i_sak_2012914">I
 879 asked both the Ministry of Transport and Communications as the
 880 receiver</a> and
 881 <a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/brev_om_internet_governance_og_p">asked
 882 the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva as the sender</a> for a
 883 copy, to see if they both agreed that it should be withheld from the
 884 public.  The ministry upheld its rejection quoting the same law
 885 reference as before, while the permanent mission rejected it quoting a
 886 different clause
 887 (<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20
 888 letter b</a>), claiming that they were required to keep the
 889 content of the document from the public because it contained
 890 information given to Norway with the expressed or implied expectation
 891 that the information should not be made public.  I asked the permanent
 892 mission for an explanation, and was told that the document contained
 893 an account from a meeting held in the Pentagon for a limited group of NATO
 894 nations where the organiser of the meeting did not intend the content
 895 of the meeting to be publicly known.  They explained that giving me a
 896 copy might cause Norway to not get access to similar information in
 897 the future and thus hurt the future foreign interests of Norway.  They
 898 also explained that the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was not
 899 the author of the document, they only got a copy of it, and because of
 900 this had not listed it in their mail journal.</p>
 901
 902 <p>Armed with this
 903 knowledge I asked the Ministry to reconsider and asked who was the
 904 author of the document, now realising that it was not same as the
 905 "sender" according to Ministry of Transport and Communications.  The
 906 ministry upheld its rejection but told me the name of the author of
 907 the document.  According to
 908 <a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/unga69_rapport1/id2001204/">a
 909 government report</a> the author was with the Permanent Mission of
 910 Norway in New York a bit more than a year later (2014-09-22), so I
 911 guessed that might be the office responsible for writing and sending
 912 the report initially and
 913 <a href="https://www.mimesbronn.no/request/mote_2012_i_pentagon_om_itu">asked
 914 them for a copy</a> but I was obviously wrong as I was told that the
 915 document was unknown to them and that the author did not work there
 916 when the document was written.  Next, I asked the Permanent Mission of
 917 Norway in Geneva and the Foreign Ministry to reconsider and at least
 918 tell me who sent the document to Deputy Permanent Representative with
 919 the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva.  The Foreign Ministry also
 920 upheld its rejection, but told me that the person sending the document
 921 to Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was the defence attaché with
 922 the Norwegian Embassy in Washington.  I do not know if this is the
 923 same person as the author of the document.</p>
 924
 925 <p>If I understand the situation correctly, someone capable of
 926 inviting selected NATO nations to a meeting in Pentagon organised a
 927 meeting where someone representing the Norwegian defence attaché in
 928 Washington attended, and the account from this meeting is interpreted
 929 by the Ministry of Transport and Communications to expose Norways
 930 negotiating position, negotiating strategies and similar regarding the
 931 ITU negotiations on Internet Governance.  It is truly amazing what can
 932 be derived from mere meta-data.</p>
 933
 934 <p>I wonder which NATO countries besides Norway attended this meeting?
 935 And what exactly was said and done at the meeting?  Anyone know?</p>
 936
 937       </div>
 938       <div class="tags">
 939
 940
 941         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</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>.
 942
 943
 944       </div>
 945     </div>
 946     <div class="padding"></div>
 947
 948     <div class="entry">
 949       <div class="title">
 950         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_book___Fri_kultur__by__lessig__a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of__Free_Culture__from_2004.html">New book, "Fri kultur" by @lessig, a Norwegian Bokmål translation of "Free Culture" from 2004</a>
 951       </div>
 952       <div class="date">
 953         31st October 2015
 954       </div>
 955       <div class="body">
 956         <p>People keep asking me where to get the various forms of the book I
 957 published last week, the Norwegian Bokmål edition of Lawrence Lessigs
 958 book <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>.  It was
 959 published on paper via lulu.com, and is also available in PDF, ePub
 960 and MOBI format.  I currently sell the paper edition for self cost
 961 from lulu.com, but might extend the distribution to book stores like
 962 Amazon and Barnes & Noble later.  This will double the price and force
 963 me to make a profit from selling the book.  Anyway, here are links to
 964 get the book in different formats:</p>
 965
 966 <ul>
 967
 968   <li><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22406445.html">Buy
 969     paper edition from lulu.com</a></li>
 970
 971   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf">Download
 972     PDF, size 7.9 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
 973
 974   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub">Download
 975     ePub, size 11 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
 976
 977   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.mobi">Download
 978     MOBI, size 3.8 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
 979
 980 </ul>
 981
 982 <p>Note that the MOBI version have problems with the table of content,
 983 at least with the viewers I have been able to test.  And the ePub file
 984 have several problems according to
 985 <a href="https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck">epubcheck</a>, but seem
 986 to display fine in the viewers I have tested.  All the files needed to
 987 create the book in various forms are available from
 988 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">the
 989 github project page</a>.</p>
 990
 991 <p>The project got press coverage from the Norwegian IT news site
 992 digi.no.  Check out the article
 993 "<a href="http://www.digi.no/juss_og_samfunn/2015/10/29/vil-apne-politikernes-oyne-for-creative-commons">Vil
 994 åpne politikernes øyne for Creative Commons</a>".</li>
 995
 996 <p>I've <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">blogged
 997 about the project</a> as it moved along.  The blogs document the translation
 998 progress and insights I had along the way.</p>
 999
1000       </div>
1001       <div class="tags">
1002
1003
1004         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1005
1006
1007       </div>
1008     </div>
1009     <div class="padding"></div>
1010
1011     <div class="entry">
1012       <div class="title">
1013         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Free_Culture__by__lessig___The_background_story_for_Creative_Commons___new_edition_available.html">"Free Culture" by @lessig - The background story for Creative Commons - new edition available</a>
1014       </div>
1015       <div class="date">
1016         23rd October 2015
1017       </div>
1018       <div class="body">
1019         <p><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html">Click
1020 here to buy the book</a>.</p>
1021
1022 <p>In 2004, as the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons
1023 movement</a> gained momentum, its creator Lawrence Lessig wrote the
1024 book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)">Free
1025 Culture</a> to explain the problems with increasing copyright
1026 regulation and suggest some solutions.  I read the book back then and
1027 was very moved by it.  Reading the book inspired me and changed the
1028 way I looked on copyright law, and I would love it if more people
1029 would read it too.</p>
1030
1031 <p>Because of this, I decided in the summer of 2012 to translate it to
1032 Norwegian Bokmål and publish it for those of my friends and family
1033 that prefer to read books in Norwegian.  I translated the book using
1034 docbook and a gettext PO file, and a byproduct of this process is a
1035 new edition of the English original.  I've been in touch with the
1036 author during by work, and he said it was fine with him if I also
1037 published an English version.  So I decided to do so.  Today, I made
1038 this edition
1039 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html">available
1040 for sale on Lulu.com</a>, for those interested in a paper book.  This
1041 is the cover:
1042
1043 <p align="center"><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-10-23-free-culture-english-published-cover.png"/></a></p>
1044
1045 <p>The Norwegian Bokmål version will be available for purchase in a
1046 few days.  I also plan to publish a French version in a few weeks or
1047 months, depending on the amount of people with knowledge of French to
1048 join the translation project.  So far there is only one active
1049 person, but the French book is almost completely translated but
1050 need some proof reading.</p>
1051
1052 <p>The book is also available in PDF, ePub and MOBI formats from
1053 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
1054 github project page</a>.  Note the ePub and MOBI versions have some
1055 formatting problems I believe is due to bugs in the docbook tool
1056 dbtoepub (Debian BTS issues
1057 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=795842">#795842</a>
1058 and
1059 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=796871">#796871</a>),
1060 but I have not taken the time to investigate.  I recommend the PDF and
1061 ePub version for now, as they seem to show up fine in the viewers I
1062 have available.</p>
1063
1064 <p>After the translation to Norwegian Bokmål was complete, I was able
1065 to secure some sponsoring from
1066 <a href="http://www.nuugfoundation.no/">the NUUG Foundation</a> to
1067 print the book.  This is the reason their logo is located on the back
1068 cover. I am very grateful for their contribution, and will use it to
1069 give a copy of the Norwegian edition to members of the Norwegian
1070 Parliament and other decision makers here in Norway.</p>
1071
1072       </div>
1073       <div class="tags">
1074
1075
1076         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1077
1078
1079       </div>
1080     </div>
1081     <div class="padding"></div>
1082
1083     <div class="entry">
1084       <div class="title">
1085         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lawrence_Lessig_interviewed_Edward_Snowden_a_year_ago.html">Lawrence Lessig interviewed Edward Snowden a year ago</a>
1086       </div>
1087       <div class="date">
1088         19th October 2015
1089       </div>
1090       <div class="body">
1091         <p>Last year, <a href="https://lessig2016.us/">US president candidate
1092 in the Democratic Party</a> Lawrence interviewed Edward Snowden.  The
1093 one hour interview was
1094 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Sr96TFQQE">published by
1095 Harvard Law School 2014-10-23 on Youtube</a>, and the meeting took
1096 place 2014-10-20.</p>
1097
1098 <p>The questions are very good, and there is lots of useful
1099 information to be learned and very interesting issues to think about
1100 being raised.  Please check it out.</p>
1101
1102 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o_Sr96TFQQE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
1103
1104 <p>I find it especially interesting to hear again that Snowden did try
1105 to bring up his reservations through the official channels without any
1106 luck.  It is in sharp contrast to the answers made 2013-11-06 by the
1107 Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg to the Norwegian Parliament,
1108 <a href="https://tale.holderdeord.no/speeches/s131106/68">claiming
1109 Snowden is no Whistle-Blower</a> because he should have taken up his
1110 concerns internally and using official channels.  It make me sad
1111 that this is the political leadership we have here in Norway.</p>
1112
1113       </div>
1114       <div class="tags">
1115
1116
1117         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1118
1119
1120       </div>
1121     </div>
1122     <div class="padding"></div>
1123
1124     <div class="entry">
1125       <div class="title">
1126         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Story_of_Aaron_Swartz___Let_us_all_weep_.html">The Story of Aaron Swartz - Let us all weep!</a>
1127       </div>
1128       <div class="date">
1129          8th October 2015
1130       </div>
1131       <div class="body">
1132         <p>The movie "<a href="http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy">The
1133 Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz</a>" is both inspiring
1134 and depressing at the same time.  The work of Aaron Swartz has
1135 inspired me in my work, and I am grateful of all the improvements he
1136 was able to initiate or complete.  I wish I am able to do as much good
1137 in my life as he did in his.  Every minute of this 1:45 long movie is
1138 inspiring in documenting how much impact a single person can have on
1139 improving the society and this world.  And it is depressing in
1140 documenting how the law enforcement of USA (and other countries) is
1141 corrupted to a point where they can push a bright kid to his death for
1142 downloading too many scientific articles.  Aaron is dead.  Let us all
1143 weep.</p>
1144
1145 <p>The movie is also available on
1146 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58">Youtube</a>.  I
1147 wish there were Norwegian subtitles available, so I could show it to
1148 my parents.</p>
1149
1150       </div>
1151       <div class="tags">
1152
1153
1154         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
1155
1156
1157       </div>
1158     </div>
1159     <div class="padding"></div>
1160
1161     <div class="entry">
1162       <div class="title">
1163         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_Docbook_PDF_EPUB_MOBI_edition_of_the_Free_Culture_book.html">French Docbook/PDF/EPUB/MOBI edition of the Free Culture book</a>
1164       </div>
1165       <div class="date">
1166          1st October 2015
1167       </div>
1168       <div class="body">
1169         <p>As I wrap up the Norwegian version of
1170 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
1171 Culture</a> book by Lawrence Lessig (still waiting for my final proof
1172 reading copy to arrive in the mail), my great
1173 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a> helper and
1174 developer of the dblatex docbook processor, Benoît Guillon, decided a
1175 to try to create a French version of the book.  He started with the
1176 French translation available from the
1177 <a href="http://www.wikilivres.ca/wiki/Culture_libre">Wikilivres wiki
1178 pages</a>, and wrote a program to convert it into a PO file, allowing
1179 the translation to be integrated into the po4a based framework I use
1180 to create the Norwegian translation from the English edition.  We meet
1181 on the <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23dblatex">#dblatex IRC
1182 channel</a> to discuss the work.  If you want to help create a French
1183 edition, check out
1184 <a href="https://github.com/marsgui/free-culture-lessig">his git
1185 repository</a> and join us on IRC.  If the French edition look good,
1186 we might publish it as a paper book on lulu.com.  A French version of
1187 the drawings and the cover need to be provided for this to happen.</p>
1188
1189       </div>
1190       <div class="tags">
1191
1192
1193         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1194
1195
1196       </div>
1197     </div>
1198     <div class="padding"></div>
1199
1200     <div class="entry">
1201       <div class="title">
1202         <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>
1203       </div>
1204       <div class="date">
1205         24th September 2015
1206       </div>
1207       <div class="body">
1208         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
1209 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
1210 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
1211 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
1212 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
1213 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
1214 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
1215
1216 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
1217
1218 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
1219 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
1220 by someone else.  I found
1221 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
1222 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
1223 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
1224 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
1225 from him.  Via
1226 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
1227 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
1228 discovered
1229 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
1230 available in Debian.</p>
1231
1232 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
1233 battery stats ever since. Now my
1234 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
1235 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
1236 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
1237 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
1238
1239 <pre>
1240 #!/bin/sh
1241 # Inspired by
1242 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
1243 # See also
1244 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
1245 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
1246
1247 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
1248     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
1249
1250 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
1251     (
1252         printf "timestamp,"
1253         for f in $files; do
1254             printf "%s," $f
1255         done
1256         echo
1257     ) > "$logfile"
1258 fi
1259
1260 log_battery() {
1261     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
1262     # when several log processes run in parallel.
1263     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
1264         for f in $files; do \
1265             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
1266         done)
1267     echo "$msg"
1268 }
1269
1270 cd /sys/class/power_supply
1271
1272 for bat in BAT*; do
1273     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
1274 done
1275 </pre>
1276
1277 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
1278 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
1279 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
1280 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
1281 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
1282 The code for the Debian package
1283 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
1284 available on github</a>.</p>
1285
1286 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
1287
1288 <pre>
1289 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
1290 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
1291 [...]
1292 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
1293 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
1294 </pre>
1295
1296 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
1297 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
1298 battery.</p>
1299
1300 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
1301 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
1302 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
1303 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
1304 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
1305 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
1306 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
1307 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
1308 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
1309 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
1310 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
1311 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
1312 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
1313 Linux too.</p>
1314
1315 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
1316 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
1317 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
1318 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
1319 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
1320 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
1321 load).</p>
1322
1323 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
1324 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
1325 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
1326 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
1327 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
1328 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
1329 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
1330 those.</p>
1331
1332 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
1333 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
1334 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
1335 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
1336 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
1337 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
1338 specific.</p>
1339
1340       </div>
1341       <div class="tags">
1342
1343
1344         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1345
1346
1347       </div>
1348     </div>
1349     <div class="padding"></div>
1350
1351     <div class="entry">
1352       <div class="title">
1353         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Book_cover_for_the_Free_Culture_book_finally_done.html">Book cover for the Free Culture book finally done</a>
1354       </div>
1355       <div class="date">
1356          3rd September 2015
1357       </div>
1358       <div class="body">
1359         <p>Creating a good looking book cover proved harder than I expected.
1360 I wanted to create a cover looking similar to the original cover of
1361 the
1362 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
1363 Culture</a> book we are translating to Norwegian, and I wanted it in
1364 vector format for high resolution printing.  But my inkscape knowledge
1365 were not nearly good enough to pull that off.
1366
1367 <p>But thanks to the great inkscape community, I was able to wrap up
1368 the cover yesterday evening.  I asked on the
1369 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23inkscape">#inkscape IRC channel</a>
1370 on Freenode for help and clues, and Marc Jeanmougin (Mc-) volunteered
1371 to try to recreate it based on the PDF of the cover from the HTML
1372 version.  Not only did he create a
1373 <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/copy1.svg ">SVG document with
1374 the original and his vector version side by side</a>, he even provided
1375 an <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/out-1.ogv">instruction
1376 video</a> explaining how he did it</a>.  But the instruction video is
1377 not easy to follow for an untrained inkscape user. The video is a
1378 recording on how he did it, and he is obviously very experienced as
1379 the menu selections are very quick and he mentioned on IRC that he did
1380 use some keyboard shortcuts that can't be seen on the video, but it
1381 give a good idea about the inkscape operations to use to create the
1382 stripes with the embossed copyright sign in the center.</p>
1383
1384 <p>I took his SVG file, copied the vector image and re-sized it to fit
1385 on the cover I was drawing.  I am happy with the end result, and the
1386 current english version look like this:</p>
1387
1388 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-03-free-culture-cover.png" width="70%" align="center"/>
1389
1390 <p>I am not quite sure about the text on the back, but guess it will
1391 do.  I picked three quotes from the official site for the book, and
1392 hope it will work to trigger the interest of potential readers.  The
1393 Norwegian cover will look the same, but with the texts and bar code
1394 replaced with the Norwegian version.</p>
1395
1396 <p>The book is very close to being ready for publication, and I expect
1397 to upload the final draft to Lulu in the next few days and order a
1398 final proof reading copy to verify that everything look like it should
1399 before allowing everyone to order their own copy of Free Culture, in
1400 English or Norwegian Bokmål.  I'm waiting to give the the productive
1401 proof readers a chance to complete their work.</p>
1402
1403       </div>
1404       <div class="tags">
1405
1406
1407         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</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/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html">In my hand, a pocket book edition of the Norwegian Free Culture book!</a>
1417       </div>
1418       <div class="date">
1419         19th August 2015
1420       </div>
1421       <div class="body">
1422         <p>Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian
1423 translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few
1424 years arrived in the mail.  I had to fake a cover to get the interior
1425 printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is
1426 irrelevant at this point.  I asked for a printed pocket book version
1427 to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how
1428 good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the
1429 pocket book version would look like.  After receiving the 500 page
1430 pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too
1431 small for this book.  I believe the book is too thick, and several
1432 tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that
1433 small page sizes.  I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size
1434 instead.  A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the
1435 URLs look in print.  They are very hard to read in the colophon page.
1436 The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper.  I need to
1437 change the color of links somehow to look better.  But there is a
1438 printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)</p>
1439
1440 <p>Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the
1441 store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof
1442 readers before the book is ready for proper printing.  Cover artists
1443 willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector
1444 file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as
1445 a graphics designer are mostly missing.</p>
1446
1447       </div>
1448       <div class="tags">
1449
1450
1451         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1452
1453
1454       </div>
1455     </div>
1456     <div class="padding"></div>
1457
1458     <div class="entry">
1459       <div class="title">
1460         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html">First paper version of the Norwegian Free Culture book heading my way</a>
1461       </div>
1462       <div class="date">
1463          9th August 2015
1464       </div>
1465       <div class="body">
1466         <p>Typesetting a book is harder than I hoped.  As the translation is
1467 mostly done, and a volunteer proof reader was going to check the text
1468 on paper, it was time this summer to focus on formatting my translated
1469 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> based version of the
1470 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> book by Lawrence
1471 Lessig.  I've been trying to get both docboox-xsl+fop and dblatex to
1472 give me a good looking PDF, but in the end I went with dblatex, because
1473 its Debian maintainer and upstream developer were responsive and very
1474 helpful in solving my formatting challenges.</p>
1475
1476 <p>Last night, I finally managed to create a PDF that no longer made
1477 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/">Lulu.com</a> complain after uploading,
1478 and I ordered a text version of the book on paper.  It is lacking a
1479 proper book cover and is not tagged with the correct ISBN number, but
1480 should give me an idea what the finished book will look like.</p>
1481
1482 <p>Instead of using Lulu, I did consider printing the book using
1483 <a href="http://www.createspace.com/">CreateSpace</a>, but ended up
1484 using Lulu because it had smaller book size options (CreateSpace seem
1485 to lack pocket book with extended distribution).  I looked for a
1486 similar service in Norway, but have not seen anything so far.  Please
1487 let me know if I am missing out on something here.</p>
1488
1489 <p>But I still struggle to decide the book size.  Should I go for
1490 pocket book (4.25x6.875 inches / 10.8x17.5 cm) with 556 pages, Digest
1491 (5.5x8.5 inches / 14x21.6 cm) with 323 pages or US Trade (6x8 inches /
1492 15.3x22.9 cm) with 280 pages?  Fewer pager give a cheaper book, and a
1493 smaller book is easier to carry around.  The test book I ordered was
1494 pocket book sized, to give me an idea how well that fit in my hand,
1495 but I suspect I will end up using a digest sized book in the end to
1496 bring the prize down further.</p>
1497
1498 <p>My biggest challenge at the moment is making nice cover art.  My
1499 inkscape skills are not yet up to the task of replicating the original
1500 cover in SVG format.  I also need to figure out what to write about
1501 the book on the back (will most likely use the same text as the
1502 description on web based book stores).  I would love help with this,
1503 if you are willing to license the art source and final version using
1504 the same CC license as the book.  My artistic skills are not really up
1505 to the task.</p>
1506
1507 <p>I plan to publish the book in both English and Norwegian and on
1508 paper, in PDF form as well as EPUB and MOBI format.  The current
1509 status can as usual be found on
1510 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
1511 in the archive/ directory.  So far I have spent all time on making the
1512 PDF version look good.  Someone should probably do the same with the
1513 dbtoepub generated e-book.  Help is definitely needed here, as I
1514 expect to run out of steem before I find time to improve the epub
1515 formatting.</p>
1516
1517 <p>Please let me know via github if you find typos in the book or
1518 discover translations that should be improved.  The final proof
1519 reading is being done right now, and I expect to publish the finished
1520 result in a few months.</p>
1521
1522       </div>
1523       <div class="tags">
1524
1525
1526         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1527
1528
1529       </div>
1530     </div>
1531     <div class="padding"></div>
1532
1533     <div class="entry">
1534       <div class="title">
1535         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_DocBook_footnotes_as_endnotes_with_dblatex.html">Typesetting DocBook footnotes as endnotes with dblatex</a>
1536       </div>
1537       <div class="date">
1538         16th July 2015
1539       </div>
1540       <div class="body">
1541         <p>I'm still working on the Norwegian version of the
1542 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book by Lawrence
1543 Lessig</a>, and is now working on the final typesetting and layout.
1544 One of the features I want to get the structure similar to the
1545 original book is to typeset the footnotes as endnotes in the notes
1546 chapter.  Based on the
1547 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/685063">feedback from the Debian
1548 maintainer and the dblatex developer</a>, I came up with this recipe I
1549 would like to share with you.  The proposal was to create a new LaTeX
1550 class file and add the LaTeX code there, but this is not always
1551 practical, when I want to be able to replace the class using a make
1552 file variable.  So my proposal misuses the latex.begindocument XSL
1553 parameter value, to get a small fragment into the correct location in
1554 the generated LaTeX File.</p>
1555
1556 <p>First, decide where in the DocBook document to place the endnotes,
1557 and add this text there:</p>
1558
1559 <pre>
1560 &lt;?latex \theendnotes ?&gt;
1561 </pre>
1562
1563 <p>Next, create a xsl stylesheet file dblatex-endnotes.xsl to add the
1564 code needed to add the endnote instructions in the preamble of the
1565 generated LaTeX document, with content like this:</p>
1566
1567 <pre>
1568 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
1569 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
1570   &lt;xsl:param name="latex.begindocument"&gt;
1571     &lt;xsl:text&gt;
1572 \usepackage{endnotes}
1573 \let\footnote=\endnote
1574 \def\enoteheading{\mbox{}\par\vskip-\baselineskip }
1575 \begin{document}
1576     &lt;/xsl:text&gt;
1577   &lt;/xsl:param&gt;
1578 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
1579 </pre>
1580
1581 <p>Finally, load this xsl file when running dblatex, for example like
1582 this:</p>
1583
1584 <pre>
1585 dblatex --xsl-user=dblatex-endnotes.xsl freeculture.nb.xml
1586 </pre>
1587
1588 <p>The end result can be seen on github, where
1589 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
1590 book project</a> is located.</p>
1591
1592       </div>
1593       <div class="tags">
1594
1595
1596         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1597
1598
1599       </div>
1600     </div>
1601     <div class="padding"></div>
1602
1603     <div class="entry">
1604       <div class="title">
1605         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_on__Internet_Broadcast_AVC_Video__licensing_and_non_private_use.html">MPEG LA on "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" licensing and non-private use</a>
1606       </div>
1607       <div class="date">
1608          7th July 2015
1609       </div>
1610       <div class="body">
1611         <p>After asking the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK)
1612 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html">why
1613 they can broadcast and stream H.264 video without an agreement with
1614 the MPEG LA</a>, I was wiser, but still confused.  So I asked MPEG LA
1615 if their understanding matched that of NRK.  As far as I can tell, it
1616 does not.</p>
1617
1618 <p>I started by asking for more information about the various
1619 licensing classes and what exactly is covered by the "Internet
1620 Broadcast AVC Video" class that NRK pointed me at to explain why NRK
1621 did not need a license for streaming H.264 video:
1622
1623 <p><blockquote>
1624
1625 <p>According to
1626 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">a
1627 MPEG LA press release dated 2010-02-02</a>, there is no charge when
1628 using MPEG AVC/H.264 according to the terms of "Internet Broadcast AVC
1629 Video".  I am trying to understand exactly what the terms of "Internet
1630 Broadcast AVC Video" is, and wondered if you could help me.  What
1631 exactly is covered by these terms, and what is not?</p>
1632
1633 <p>The only source of more information I have been able to find is a
1634 PDF named
1635 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">AVC
1636 Patent Portfolio License Briefing</a>, which states this about the
1637 fees:</p>
1638
1639 <ul>
1640  <li>Where End User pays for AVC Video
1641   <ul>
1642    <li>Subscription (not limited by title) – 100,000 or fewer
1643      subscribers/yr = no royalty; &gt; 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers/yr =
1644      $25,000; &gt;250,000 to 500,000 subscribers/yr = $50,000; &gt;500,000 to
1645      1M subscribers/yr = $75,000; &gt;1M subscribers/yr = $100,000</li>
1646
1647    <li>Title-by-Title - 12 minutes or less = no royalty; &gt;12 minutes in
1648      length = lower of (a) 2% or (b) $0.02 per title</li>
1649   </ul></li>
1650
1651  <li>Where remuneration is from other sources
1652   <ul>
1653    <li>Free Television - (a) one-time $2,500 per transmission encoder or
1654      (b) annual fee starting at $2,500 for &gt; 100,000 HH rising to
1655      maximum $10,000 for &gt;1,000,000 HH</li>
1656
1657    <li>Internet Broadcast AVC Video (not title-by-title, not subscription)
1658      – no royalty for life of the AVC Patent Portfolio License</li>
1659   </ul></li>
1660 </ul>
1661
1662 <p>Am I correct in assuming that the four categories listed is the
1663 categories used when selecting licensing terms, and that "Internet
1664 Broadcast AVC Video" is the category for things that do not fall into
1665 one of the other three categories?  Can you point me to a good source
1666 explaining what is ment by "title-by-title" and "Free Television" in
1667 the license terms for AVC/H.264?</p>
1668
1669 <p>Will a web service providing H.264 encoded video content in a
1670 "video on demand" fashing similar to Youtube and Vimeo, where no
1671 subscription is required and no payment is required from end users to
1672 get access to the videos, fall under the terms of the "Internet
1673 Broadcast AVC Video", ie no royalty for life of the AVC Patent
1674 Portfolio license?  Does it matter if some users are subscribed to get
1675 access to personalized services?</p>
1676
1677 <p>Note, this request and all answers will be published on the
1678 Internet.</p>
1679 </blockquote></p>
1680
1681 <p>The answer came quickly from Benjamin J. Myers, Licensing Associate
1682 with the MPEG LA:</p>
1683
1684 <p><blockquote>
1685 <p>Thank you for your message and for your interest in MPEG LA.  We
1686 appreciate hearing from you and I will be happy to assist you.</p>
1687
1688 <p>As you are aware, MPEG LA offers our AVC Patent Portfolio License
1689 which provides coverage under patents that are essential for use of
1690 the AVC/H.264 Standard (MPEG-4 Part 10).  Specifically, coverage is
1691 provided for end products and video content that make use of AVC/H.264
1692 technology.  Accordingly, the party offering such end products and
1693 video to End Users concludes the AVC License and is responsible for
1694 paying the applicable royalties.</p>
1695
1696 <p>Regarding Internet Broadcast AVC Video, the AVC License generally
1697 defines such content to be video that is distributed to End Users over
1698 the Internet free-of-charge.  Therefore, if a party offers a service
1699 which allows users to upload AVC/H.264 video to its website, and such
1700 AVC Video is delivered to End Users for free, then such video would
1701 receive coverage under the sublicense for Internet Broadcast AVC
1702 Video, which is not subject to any royalties for the life of the AVC
1703 License.  This would also apply in the scenario where a user creates a
1704 free online account in order to receive a customized offering of free
1705 AVC Video content.  In other words, as long as the End User is given
1706 access to or views AVC Video content at no cost to the End User, then
1707 no royalties would be payable under our AVC License.</p>
1708
1709 <p>On the other hand, if End Users pay for access to AVC Video for a
1710 specific period of time (e.g., one month, one year, etc.), then such
1711 video would constitute Subscription AVC Video.  In cases where AVC
1712 Video is delivered to End Users on a pay-per-view basis, then such
1713 content would constitute Title-by-Title AVC Video.  If a party offers
1714 Subscription or Title-by-Title AVC Video to End Users, then they would
1715 be responsible for paying the applicable royalties you noted below.</p>
1716
1717 <p>Finally, in the case where AVC Video is distributed for free
1718 through an "over-the-air, satellite and/or cable transmission", then
1719 such content would constitute Free Television AVC Video and would be
1720 subject to the applicable royalties.</p>
1721
1722 <p>For your reference, I have attached
1723 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-07-07-mpegla.pdf">a
1724 .pdf copy of the AVC License</a>. You will find the relevant
1725 sublicense information regarding AVC Video in Sections 2.2 through
1726 2.5, and the corresponding royalties in Section 3.1.2 through 3.1.4.
1727 You will also find the definitions of Title-by-Title AVC Video,
1728 Subscription AVC Video, Free Television AVC Video, and Internet
1729 Broadcast AVC Video in Section 1 of the License.  Please note that the
1730 electronic copy is provided for informational purposes only and cannot
1731 be used for execution.</p>
1732
1733 <p>I hope the above information is helpful.  If you have additional
1734 questions or need further assistance with the AVC License, please feel
1735 free to contact me directly.</p>
1736 </blockquote></p>
1737
1738 <p>Having a fresh copy of the license text was useful, and knowing
1739 that the definition of Title-by-Title required payment per title made
1740 me aware that my earlier understanding of that phrase had been wrong.
1741 But I still had a few questions:</p>
1742
1743 <p><blockquote>
1744 <p>I have a small followup question.  Would it be possible for me to get
1745 a license with MPEG LA even if there are no royalties to be paid?  The
1746 reason I ask, is that some video related products have a copyright
1747 clause limiting their use without a license with MPEG LA.  The clauses
1748 typically look similar to this:
1749
1750 <p><blockquote>
1751   This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
1752   the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer to (a) encode
1753   video in compliance with the AVC standard ("AVC video") and/or (b)
1754   decode AVC video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a
1755   personal and non-commercial activity and/or AVC video that was
1756   obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No
1757   license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. additional
1758   information may be obtained from MPEG LA L.L.C.
1759 </blockquote></p>
1760
1761 <p>It is unclear to me if this clause mean that I need to enter into
1762 an agreement with MPEG LA to use the product in question, even if
1763 there are no royalties to be paid to MPEG LA.  I suspect it will
1764 differ depending on the jurisdiction, and mine is Norway.  What is
1765 MPEG LAs view on this?</p>
1766 </blockquote></p>
1767
1768 <p>According to the answer, MPEG LA believe those using such tools for
1769 non-personal or commercial use need a license with them:</p>
1770
1771 <p><blockquote>
1772
1773 <p>With regard to the Notice to Customers, I would like to begin by
1774 clarifying that the Notice from Section 7.1 of the AVC License
1775 reads:</p>
1776
1777 <p>THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR
1778 THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT
1779 RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC
1780 STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED
1781 BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM
1782 A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED
1783 OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE
1784 OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM</p>
1785
1786 <p>The Notice to Customers is intended to inform End Users of the
1787 personal usage rights (for example, to watch video content) included
1788 with the product they purchased, and to encourage any party using the
1789 product for commercial purposes to contact MPEG LA in order to become
1790 licensed for such use (for example, when they use an AVC Product to
1791 deliver Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free Television or Internet
1792 Broadcast AVC Video to End Users, or to re-Sell a third party's AVC
1793 Product as their own branded AVC Product).</p>
1794
1795 <p>Therefore, if a party is to be licensed for its use of an AVC
1796 Product to Sell AVC Video on a Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free
1797 Television or Internet Broadcast basis, that party would need to
1798 conclude the AVC License, even in the case where no royalties were
1799 payable under the License.  On the other hand, if that party (either a
1800 Consumer or business customer) simply uses an AVC Product for their
1801 own internal purposes and not for the commercial purposes referenced
1802 above, then such use would be included in the royalty paid for the AVC
1803 Products by the licensed supplier.</p>
1804
1805 <p>Finally, I note that our AVC License provides worldwide coverage in
1806 countries that have AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, including
1807 Norway.</p>
1808
1809 <p>I hope this clarification is helpful.  If I may be of any further
1810 assistance, just let me know.</p>
1811 </blockquote></p>
1812
1813 <p>The mentioning of Norwegian patents made me a bit confused, so I
1814 asked for more information:</p>
1815
1816 <p><blockquote>
1817
1818 <p>But one minor question at the end.  If I understand you correctly,
1819 you state in the quote above that there are patents in the AVC Patent
1820 Portfolio that are valid in Norway.  This make me believe I read the
1821 list available from &lt;URL:
1822 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx">http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx</a>
1823 &gt; incorrectly, as I believed the "NO" prefix in front of patents
1824 were Norwegian patents, and the only one I could find under Mitsubishi
1825 Electric Corporation expired in 2012.  Which patents are you referring
1826 to that are relevant for Norway?</p>
1827
1828 </blockquote></p>
1829
1830 <p>Again, the quick answer explained how to read the list of patents
1831 in that list:</p>
1832
1833 <p><blockquote>
1834
1835 <p>Your understanding is correct that the last AVC Patent Portfolio
1836 Patent in Norway expired on 21 October 2012.  Therefore, where AVC
1837 Video is both made and Sold in Norway after that date, then no
1838 royalties would be payable for such AVC Video under the AVC License.
1839 With that said, our AVC License provides historic coverage for AVC
1840 Products and AVC Video that may have been manufactured or Sold before
1841 the last Norwegian AVC patent expired.  I would also like to clarify
1842 that coverage is provided for the country of manufacture and the
1843 country of Sale that has active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents.</p>
1844
1845 <p>Therefore, if a party offers AVC Products or AVC Video for Sale in
1846 a country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents (for example,
1847 Sweden, Denmark, Finland, etc.), then that party would still need
1848 coverage under the AVC License even if such products or video are
1849 initially made in a country without active AVC Patent Portfolio
1850 Patents (for example, Norway).  Similarly, a party would need to
1851 conclude the AVC License if they make AVC Products or AVC Video in a
1852 country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, but eventually Sell
1853 such AVC Products or AVC Video in a country without active AVC Patent
1854 Portfolio Patents.</p>
1855 </blockquote></p>
1856
1857 <p>As far as I understand it, MPEG LA believe anyone using Adobe
1858 Premiere and other video related software with a H.264 distribution
1859 license need a license agreement with MPEG LA to use such tools for
1860 anything non-private or commercial, while it is OK to set up a
1861 Youtube-like service as long as no-one pays to get access to the
1862 content.  I still have no clear idea how this applies to Norway, where
1863 none of the patents MPEG LA is licensing are valid.  Will the
1864 copyright terms take precedence or can those terms be ignored because
1865 the patents are not valid in Norway?</p>
1866
1867       </div>
1868       <div class="tags">
1869
1870
1871         Tags: <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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</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>.
1872
1873
1874       </div>
1875     </div>
1876     <div class="padding"></div>
1877
1878     <div class="entry">
1879       <div class="title">
1880         <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>
1881       </div>
1882       <div class="date">
1883          5th July 2015
1884       </div>
1885       <div class="body">
1886         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
1887 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
1888 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
1889 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
1890 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
1891 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
1892 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
1893 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
1894 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
1895 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
1896 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
1897
1898 <p>One tip I got was to use the
1899 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
1900 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
1901 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
1902 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
1903 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
1904 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
1905
1906 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
1907 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
1908 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
1909 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
1910 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
1911 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
1912 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
1913 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
1914 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
1915 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
1916 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
1917 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
1918 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
1919 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
1920 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
1921
1922 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
1923 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
1924 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
1925 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
1926
1927 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
1928 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
1929
1930 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
1931 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
1932 different
1933 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
1934 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
1935
1936       </div>
1937       <div class="tags">
1938
1939
1940         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>.
1941
1942
1943       </div>
1944     </div>
1945     <div class="padding"></div>
1946
1947     <div class="entry">
1948       <div class="title">
1949         <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>
1950       </div>
1951       <div class="date">
1952          3rd July 2015
1953       </div>
1954       <div class="body">
1955         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
1956 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
1957 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
1958 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
1959 flickering.</p>
1960
1961 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
1962 still as
1963 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
1964 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
1965 good help from
1966 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
1967 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
1968 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
1969 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
1970 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
1971 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
1972 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
1973 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
1974 deteriorated since X41.</p>
1975
1976 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
1977 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
1978 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
1979 have suggestions.</p>
1980
1981 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
1982 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
1983 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
1984
1985       </div>
1986       <div class="tags">
1987
1988
1989         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>.
1990
1991
1992       </div>
1993     </div>
1994     <div class="padding"></div>
1995
1996     <div class="entry">
1997       <div class="title">
1998         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MakerCon_Nordic_videos_now_available_on_Frikanalen.html">MakerCon Nordic videos now available on Frikanalen</a>
1999       </div>
2000       <div class="date">
2001          2nd July 2015
2002       </div>
2003       <div class="body">
2004         <p>Last oktober I was involved on behalf of
2005 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> with recording the talks at
2006 <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">MakerCon Nordic</a>, a conference for
2007 the Maker movement.  Since then it has been the plan to publish the
2008 recordings on <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, which
2009 finally happened the last few days.  A few talks are missing because
2010 the speakers asked the organizers to not publish them, but most of the
2011 talks are available.  The talks are being broadcasted on RiksTV
2012 channel 50 and using multicast on Uninett, as well as being available
2013 from the Frikanalen web site.  The unedited recordings are
2014 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">available on
2015 Youtube too</a>.</p>
2016
2017 <p>This is the list of talks available at the moment.  Visit the
2018 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/?q=makercon">Frikanalen video
2019 pages</a> to view them.</p>
2020
2021 <ul>
2022
2023   <li>Evolutionary algorithms as a design tool - from art
2024       to robotics (Kyrre Glette)</li>
2025
2026   <li>Make and break (Hans Gerhard Meier)</li>
2027
2028   <li>Making a one year school course for young makers
2029       (Olav Helland)</li>
2030
2031   <li>Innovation Inspiration - IPR Databases as a Source of
2032       Inspiration (Hege Langlo)</li>
2033
2034   <li>Making a toy for makers (Erik Torstensson)</li>
2035
2036   <li>How to make 3D printer electronics (Elias Bakken)</li>
2037
2038   <li>Hovering Clouds: Looking at online tool offerings for Product
2039       Design and 3D Printing (William Kempton)</li>
2040
2041   <li>Travelling maker stories (Øyvind Nydal Dahl)</li>
2042
2043   <li>Making the first Maker Faire in Sweden (Nils Olander)</li>
2044
2045   <li>Breaking the mold: Printing 1000’s of parts (Espen Sivertsen)</li>
2046
2047   <li>Ultimaker — and open source 3D printing (Erik de Bruijn)</li>
2048
2049   <li>Autodesk’s 3D Printing Platform: Sparking innovation (Hilde
2050       Sevens)</li>
2051
2052   <li>How Making is Changing the World – and How You Can Too!
2053       (Jennifer Turliuk)</li>
2054
2055   <li>Open-Source Adventuring: OpenROV, OpenExplorer and the Future of
2056       Connected Exploration (David Lang)</li>
2057
2058   <li>Making in Norway (Haakon Karlsen Jr., Graham Hayward and Jens
2059       Dyvik)</li>
2060
2061   <li>The Impact of the Maker Movement (Mike Senese)</li>
2062
2063 </ul>
2064
2065 <p>Part of the reason this took so long was that the scripts NUUG had
2066 to prepare a recording for publication were five years old and no
2067 longer worked with the current video processing tools (command line
2068 argument changes).  In addition, we needed better audio normalization,
2069 which sent me on a detour to
2070 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">package
2071 bs1770gain for Debian</a>.  Now this is in place and it became a lot
2072 easier to publish NUUG videos on Frikanalen.</p>
2073
2074       </div>
2075       <div class="tags">
2076
2077
2078         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</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>.
2079
2080
2081       </div>
2082     </div>
2083     <div class="padding"></div>
2084
2085     <div class="entry">
2086       <div class="title">
2087         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html">Graphing the Norwegian company ownership structure</a>
2088       </div>
2089       <div class="date">
2090         15th June 2015
2091       </div>
2092       <div class="body">
2093         <p>It is a bit work to figure out the ownership structure of companies
2094 in Norway.  The information is publicly available, but one need to
2095 recursively look up ownership for all owners to figure out the complete
2096 ownership graph of a given set of companies.  To save me the work in
2097 the future, I wrote a script to do this automatically, outputting the
2098 ownership structure using the Graphviz/dotty format.  The data source
2099 is web scraping from <a href="http://www.proff.no/">Proff</a>, because
2100 I failed to find a useful source directly from the official keepers of
2101 the ownership data, <a href="http://www.brreg.no/">Brønnøysundsregistrene</a>.</p>
2102
2103 <p>To get an ownership graph for a set of companies, fetch
2104 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/brreg-norway-ownership-graph">the code from git</a> and run it using the organisation number.  I'm
2105 using the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet as an example here, as its
2106 ownership structure is very simple:</p>
2107
2108 <pre>
2109 % time ./bin/eierskap-dotty 958033540 > dagbladet.dot
2110
2111 real    0m2.841s
2112 user    0m0.184s
2113 sys     0m0.036s
2114 %
2115 </pre>
2116
2117 <p>The script accept several organisation numbers on the command line,
2118 allowing a cluster of companies to be graphed in the same image.  The
2119 resulting dot file for the example above look like this.  The edges
2120 are labeled with the ownership percentage, and the nodes uses the
2121 organisation number as their name and the name as the label:</p>
2122
2123 <pre>
2124 digraph ownership {
2125 rankdir = LR;
2126 "Aller Holding A/s" -> "910119877" [label="100%"]
2127 "910119877" -> "998689015" [label="100%"]
2128 "998689015" -> "958033540" [label="99%"]
2129 "974530600" -> "958033540" [label="1%"]
2130 "958033540" [label="AS DAGBLADET"]
2131 "998689015" [label="Berner Media Holding AS"]
2132 "974530600" [label="Dagbladets Stiftelse"]
2133 "910119877" [label="Aller Media AS"]
2134 }
2135 </pre>
2136
2137 <p>To view the ownership graph, run "<tt>dotty dagbladet.dot</tt>" or
2138 convert it to a PNG using "<tt>dot -T png dagbladet.dot >
2139 dagbladet.png</tt>".  The result can be seen below:</p>
2140
2141 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-06-15-ownership-graphs-norway-dagbladet.png" width="80%">
2142
2143 <p>Note that I suspect the "Aller Holding A/S" entry to be incorrect
2144 data in the official ownership register, as that name is not
2145 registered in the official company register for Norway.  The ownership
2146 register is sensitive to typos and there seem to be no strict checking
2147 of the ownership links.</p>
2148
2149 <p>Let me know if you improve the script or find better data sources.
2150 The code is licensed according to GPL 2 or newer.</p>
2151
2152 <p>Update 2015-06-15: Since the initial post I've been told that
2153 "<a href="http://www.proff.dk/firma/carl-allers-etablissement-aktieselskab/københavn-v/hovedkontorer/13624518-3/">Aller
2154 Holding A/S</a>" is a Danish company, which explain why it did not
2155 have a Norwegian organisation number.  I've also been told that there
2156 is a <a href="http://www.brreg.no/automatiske/webservices/">web
2157 services API available</a> from Brønnøysundsregistrene, for those
2158 willing to accept the terms or pay the price.</p>
2159
2160       </div>
2161       <div class="tags">
2162
2163
2164         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
2165
2166
2167       </div>
2168     </div>
2169     <div class="padding"></div>
2170
2171     <div class="entry">
2172       <div class="title">
2173         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</a>
2174       </div>
2175       <div class="date">
2176         11th June 2015
2177       </div>
2178       <div class="body">
2179         <p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
2180 everywhere.  Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
2181 ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
2182 the viewers do not like this.  This fact is well known to the TV
2183 channels.  See for example the BBC white paper
2184 "<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
2185 for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
2186 summary of the problem domain.  To better address the need for even
2187 loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
2188 new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
2189 standardizing loudness.  From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
2190 "<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
2191 measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
2192
2193 <p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
2194 loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
2195 having a way to measure is not enough.  To get the same loudness
2196 across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
2197 on.  For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
2198 R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
2199 normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
2200 specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS.  In Norway, I have been
2201 told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
2202 follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
2203
2204 <p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
2205 level using the LUFS.  In Debian, I am aware of a library named
2206 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
2207 able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
2208 named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
2209 capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
2210 for NEW processing.  I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
2211 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
2212 multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
2213
2214 <p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
2215 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
2216 R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
2217 do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
2218 the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
2219 Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
2220 I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
2221 NUUG member organisation</a>.  The program seem to be able to measure
2222 the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
2223 successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files.  I suspect it
2224 should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
2225
2226       </div>
2227       <div class="tags">
2228
2229
2230         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</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>.
2231
2232
2233       </div>
2234     </div>
2235     <div class="padding"></div>
2236
2237     <div class="entry">
2238       <div class="title">
2239         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</a>
2240       </div>
2241       <div class="date">
2242         10th May 2015
2243       </div>
2244       <div class="body">
2245         <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
2246 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
2247 criminal or not, are
2248 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
2249 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
2250 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
2251 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
2252 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
2253 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
2254 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
2255 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
2256 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
2257 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
2258 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
2259 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
2260 the police.</p>
2261
2262 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
2263 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
2264 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
2265 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
2266 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
2267 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
2268 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
2269 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
2270 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
2271 is good to know that
2272 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
2273 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
2274 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
2275 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
2276 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
2277 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
2278 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
2279 business getting access to that information.</p>
2280
2281 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
2282 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
2283 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
2284 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
2285 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
2286 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
2287 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
2288
2289 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
2290 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
2291 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
2292 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
2293
2294 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
2295 really could make such decision, I wrote
2296 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
2297 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
2298 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
2299
2300       </div>
2301       <div class="tags">
2302
2303
2304         Tags: <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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2305
2306
2307       </div>
2308     </div>
2309     <div class="padding"></div>
2310
2311     <div class="entry">
2312       <div class="title">
2313         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
2314       </div>
2315       <div class="date">
2316          1st May 2015
2317       </div>
2318       <div class="body">
2319         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
2320 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
2321 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
2322 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
2323 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
2324 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
2325 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
2326
2327 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
2328 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
2329 the 2012 numbers are from
2330 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
2331 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
2332 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
2333 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
2334 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
2335
2336 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
2337 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
2338 enough.  See for example a
2339 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
2340 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
2341 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
2342 to get the storage requirements.</p>
2343
2344 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
2345 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
2346 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
2347 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
2348 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
2349
2350 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
2351 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
2352 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
2353 and large organisations:</p>
2354
2355 <table border="1">
2356 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
2357 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
2358 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
2359 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
2360 </table>
2361
2362 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
2363 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
2364 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
2365 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
2366 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
2367 collecting the data?</p>
2368
2369       </div>
2370       <div class="tags">
2371
2372
2373         Tags: <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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2374
2375
2376       </div>
2377     </div>
2378     <div class="padding"></div>
2379
2380     <div class="entry">
2381       <div class="title">
2382         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
2383       </div>
2384       <div class="date">
2385         26th April 2015
2386       </div>
2387       <div class="body">
2388         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
2389 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
2390 announcement today</a>:</p>
2391
2392 <pre>
2393 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
2394 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
2395 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
2396 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
2397
2398 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
2399 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
2400 later today ;)
2401
2402 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
2403 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
2404 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
2405 be possible and encouraged!
2406
2407 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
2408 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
2409
2410 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
2411 operating system for schools, universities and other
2412 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
2413 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
2414 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
2415 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
2416 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
2417 days.
2418
2419 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
2420 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
2421 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
2422 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
2423
2424 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
2425 installation instructions are available, including detailed
2426 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
2427 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
2428 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
2429 least 5 characters!
2430
2431 == Where to download ==
2432
2433 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
2434 can be downloaded at the following locations:
2435
2436     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
2437     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
2438
2439 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
2440
2441 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
2442 available, with more software included (saving additional download
2443 time):
2444
2445     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
2446     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
2447
2448 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
2449
2450 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
2451 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
2452 options.
2453
2454 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
2455
2456 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
2457 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
2458
2459 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
2460 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
2461 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
2462 online version of the translated manual.
2463
2464 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
2465 release notes and the installation manual:
2466 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
2467 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
2468
2469
2470 == Errata / known problems ==
2471
2472     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
2473     DHCP (#780461).
2474
2475     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
2476
2477 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
2478 hostname immediately.
2479
2480 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
2481 more current and complete list.
2482
2483 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
2484
2485 === Software updates ===
2486
2487 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
2488
2489  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
2490    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
2491    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
2492
2493  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
2494    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
2495    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
2496    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
2497      the others see the manual.
2498  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
2499  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
2500  * GOsa 2.7.4
2501  * LTSP 5.5.4
2502  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
2503  * new boot framework: systemd
2504  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
2505  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
2506  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
2507  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
2508  * golearn 0.9
2509  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
2510  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
2511  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
2512  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
2513    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
2514
2515 === Installation changes ===
2516
2517     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
2518     for the hardware present.
2519
2520 === Fixed bugs ===
2521
2522 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
2523 from a user perspective:
2524
2525  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
2526    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
2527    information is corrected (710362)
2528
2529  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
2530
2531 === Sugar desktop removed ===
2532
2533 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
2534 available in Debian Edu jessie.
2535
2536
2537 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
2538
2539 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
2540 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2541 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
2542 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2543 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2544 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2545 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2546 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
2547 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2548 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2549 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
2550 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
2551 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
2552 environment.
2553
2554 == About Debian ==
2555
2556 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
2557 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
2558 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
2559 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
2560 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
2561 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
2562 operating system.
2563
2564 == Thanks ==
2565
2566 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
2567 You rock.
2568 </pre>
2569
2570       </div>
2571       <div class="tags">
2572
2573
2574         Tags: <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>.
2575
2576
2577       </div>
2578     </div>
2579     <div class="padding"></div>
2580
2581     <div class="entry">
2582       <div class="title">
2583         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
2584       </div>
2585       <div class="date">
2586         15th April 2015
2587       </div>
2588       <div class="body">
2589         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
2590 computer system for schools I've involved in,
2591 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
2592 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
2593 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
2594 Agarwal.</p>
2595
2596 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2597
2598 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
2599 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
2600 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
2601 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
2602 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
2603 few software start-ups as well.</p>
2604
2605 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2606 project?</strong></p>
2607
2608 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
2609 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
2610 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
2611 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
2612 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
2613 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
2614 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
2615
2616 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2617 Edu?</strong></p>
2618
2619 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
2620 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
2621 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
2622 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
2623 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
2624 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
2625 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
2626 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
2627
2628 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
2629 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
2630 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
2631 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
2632 for the developer per-se.</p>
2633
2634 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2635 Edu?</strong></p>
2636
2637 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
2638 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
2639 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
2640
2641 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
2642 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
2643 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
2644 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
2645 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
2646 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
2647 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
2648
2649 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
2650 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
2651 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
2652
2653 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
2654 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
2655 interactive manner. While sites such as the
2656 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
2657 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
2658 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
2659 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
2660 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
2661 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
2662 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
2663 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
2664 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
2665 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
2666 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
2667
2668 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
2669 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
2670 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
2671 also be used.</p>
2672
2673 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
2674 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
2675 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
2676 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
2677 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
2678 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
2679 the user's input.</p>
2680
2681 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
2682 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
2683 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
2684 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
2685 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
2686 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
2687 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
2688 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
2689
2690 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
2691 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
2692 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
2693 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
2694 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
2695 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
2696 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
2697 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
2698
2699 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2700
2701 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
2702 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
2703 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
2704 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
2705 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
2706
2707 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2708 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2709
2710 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
2711 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
2712 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
2713 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
2714 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
2715 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
2716
2717 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
2718 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
2719 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
2720 well.</p>
2721
2722 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
2723 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
2724 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
2725 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
2726
2727 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
2728 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
2729 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
2730 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
2731 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
2732 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
2733 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
2734 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
2735 releases.</p>
2736
2737 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
2738 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
2739 is aimed at.
2740
2741 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
2742 around 2 years, and
2743 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
2744 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
2745 there was :</p>
2746
2747 <ol>
2748
2749   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
2750    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
2751    portion/syllabus given.</li>
2752
2753   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
2754    is in the syllabus.</li>
2755
2756   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
2757    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
2758    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
2759    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
2760    as recognizable as say a
2761    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
2762    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
2763    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
2764    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
2765    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
2766    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
2767
2768 </ol>
2769
2770       </div>
2771       <div class="tags">
2772
2773
2774         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
2775
2776
2777       </div>
2778     </div>
2779     <div class="padding"></div>
2780
2781     <div class="entry">
2782       <div class="title">
2783         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
2784       </div>
2785       <div class="date">
2786          7th April 2015
2787       </div>
2788       <div class="body">
2789         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
2790 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
2791 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
2792
2793 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
2794 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
2795 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
2796 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
2797 part of my involvement with the
2798 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
2799 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
2800 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
2801 Hackathon with our friends
2802 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
2803 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
2804 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
2805 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
2806
2807 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
2808 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
2809
2810       </div>
2811       <div class="tags">
2812
2813
2814         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
2815
2816
2817       </div>
2818     </div>
2819     <div class="padding"></div>
2820
2821     <div class="entry">
2822       <div class="title">
2823         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
2824       </div>
2825       <div class="date">
2826          4th April 2015
2827       </div>
2828       <div class="body">
2829         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
2830 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
2831 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
2832 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
2833 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
2834 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
2835 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
2836 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
2837 project pages.  You can also check out the
2838 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
2839 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2840 and HTML version available in the
2841 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
2842 directory</a>.</p>
2843
2844 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
2845 you find any.</p>
2846
2847       </div>
2848       <div class="tags">
2849
2850
2851         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
2852
2853
2854       </div>
2855     </div>
2856     <div class="padding"></div>
2857
2858     <div class="entry">
2859       <div class="title">
2860         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
2861       </div>
2862       <div class="date">
2863          9th March 2015
2864       </div>
2865       <div class="body">
2866         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
2867 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
2868 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
2869 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
2870 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
2871 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
2872 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
2873 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
2874 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
2875 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
2876 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
2877 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
2878 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
2879 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
2880
2881 <p>The list of NUUG videos
2882 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
2883 include things like a
2884 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
2885 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
2886 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
2887 re-implementation</a>, the
2888 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
2889 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
2890 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
2891 video</A> and many others.</p>
2892
2893 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
2894 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
2895 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
2896 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
2897 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
2898 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
2899 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
2900 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
2901 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
2902 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
2903
2904 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
2905 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
2906 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
2907 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
2908 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
2909 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
2910 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
2911 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
2912 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
2913 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
2914
2915       </div>
2916       <div class="tags">
2917
2918
2919         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2920
2921
2922       </div>
2923     </div>
2924     <div class="padding"></div>
2925
2926     <div class="entry">
2927       <div class="title">
2928         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
2929       </div>
2930       <div class="date">
2931         28th February 2015
2932       </div>
2933       <div class="body">
2934         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
2935 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
2936 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
2937 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
2938 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
2939 made for
2940 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
2941 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
2942 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
2943 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
2944 a friend have
2945 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
2946 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
2947 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
2948 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
2949 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
2950 it happen ourselves.
2951 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
2952 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
2953 is.</p>
2954
2955 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
2956 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
2957
2958       </div>
2959       <div class="tags">
2960
2961
2962         Tags: <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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2963
2964
2965       </div>
2966     </div>
2967     <div class="padding"></div>
2968
2969     <div class="entry">
2970       <div class="title">
2971         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
2972       </div>
2973       <div class="date">
2974         25th February 2015
2975       </div>
2976       <div class="body">
2977         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
2978 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
2979 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
2980 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
2981 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
2982 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
2983 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
2984 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
2985 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
2986 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
2987 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
2988 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
2989 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
2990 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
2991 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
2992 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
2993 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
2994
2995 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
2996 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
2997 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
2998 with VLC.</p>
2999
3000 <ul>
3001   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
3002   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
3003 </ul>
3004
3005 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
3006 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
3007 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
3008 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
3009 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
3010 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
3011 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
3012
3013 <blockquote><pre>
3014 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
3015  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
3016  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
3017 </pre></blockquote>
3018
3019 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
3020 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
3021 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
3022 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
3023
3024       </div>
3025       <div class="tags">
3026
3027
3028         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3029
3030
3031       </div>
3032     </div>
3033     <div class="padding"></div>
3034
3035     <div class="entry">
3036       <div class="title">
3037         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
3038       </div>
3039       <div class="date">
3040         10th February 2015
3041       </div>
3042       <div class="body">
3043         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
3044 that
3045 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
3046 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
3047 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
3048 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
3049 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
3050 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
3051 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
3052 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
3053 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
3054 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
3055 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
3056 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
3057 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
3058 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
3059 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
3060
3061 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
3062 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
3063 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
3064 controversy about these scanners.</p>
3065
3066 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
3067 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
3068 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
3069
3070       </div>
3071       <div class="tags">
3072
3073
3074         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
3075
3076
3077       </div>
3078     </div>
3079     <div class="padding"></div>
3080
3081     <div class="entry">
3082       <div class="title">
3083         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
3084       </div>
3085       <div class="date">
3086          8th February 2015
3087       </div>
3088       <div class="body">
3089         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
3090 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
3091 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
3092 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
3093 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
3094 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
3095 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
3096 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
3097 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
3098 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
3099 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
3100 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
3101
3102 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
3103 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
3104 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
3105 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
3106
3107 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
3108 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
3109 distribute the TV content.  The
3110 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
3111 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
3112 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
3113 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
3114 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
3115 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
3116 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
3117 following activity, we now have the schedule
3118 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
3119 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
3120 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
3121 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
3122
3123 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
3124 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
3125 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
3126 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
3127 streams are working as they should.</p>
3128
3129       </div>
3130       <div class="tags">
3131
3132
3133         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3134
3135
3136       </div>
3137     </div>
3138     <div class="padding"></div>
3139
3140     <div class="entry">
3141       <div class="title">
3142         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
3143       </div>
3144       <div class="date">
3145         12th January 2015
3146       </div>
3147       <div class="body">
3148         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
3149 Foundation</a> announced a new video
3150 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
3151 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
3152 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
3153 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
3154 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
3155 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
3156
3157 <p>But today I was told that
3158 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
3159 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
3160 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
3161 available in
3162 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
3163 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
3164 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
3165
3166 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
3167 Libreplanet
3168 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
3169 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
3170
3171       </div>
3172       <div class="tags">
3173
3174
3175         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
3176
3177
3178       </div>
3179     </div>
3180     <div class="padding"></div>
3181
3182     <div class="entry">
3183       <div class="title">
3184         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
3185       </div>
3186       <div class="date">
3187         30th December 2014
3188       </div>
3189       <div class="body">
3190         <p>I am very happy that we in the
3191 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
3192 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
3193 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
3194 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
3195 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
3196 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
3197 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
3198 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
3199 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
3200 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
3201
3202 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
3203 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
3204 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
3205 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
3206 reports in public.</p>
3207
3208       </div>
3209       <div class="tags">
3210
3211
3212         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</a>.
3213
3214
3215       </div>
3216     </div>
3217     <div class="padding"></div>
3218
3219     <div class="entry">
3220       <div class="title">
3221         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
3222       </div>
3223       <div class="date">
3224         19th December 2014
3225       </div>
3226       <div class="body">
3227         <p>So, Sony caved in
3228 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
3229 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
3230 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
3231 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
3232 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
3233 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
3234 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
3235 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
3236 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
3237 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
3238 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
3239 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
3240 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
3241
3242 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
3243 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
3244 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
3245 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
3246
3247 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
3248 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
3249 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
3250 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
3251 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
3252 income. :)</p>
3253
3254       </div>
3255       <div class="tags">
3256
3257
3258         Tags: <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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3259
3260
3261       </div>
3262     </div>
3263     <div class="padding"></div>
3264
3265     <div class="entry">
3266       <div class="title">
3267         <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>
3268       </div>
3269       <div class="date">
3270         22nd November 2014
3271       </div>
3272       <div class="body">
3273         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
3274 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
3275 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
3276 courtesy of
3277 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
3278 Schubert</a> and
3279 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
3280 McVittie</a>.
3281
3282 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
3283 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
3284 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
3285 you upgrade:</p>
3286
3287 <p><blockquote><pre>
3288 Package: systemd-sysv
3289 Pin: release o=Debian
3290 Pin-Priority: -1
3291 </pre></blockquote><p>
3292
3293 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
3294 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
3295 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
3296 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
3297 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
3298
3299 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
3300 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
3301 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
3302 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
3303 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
3304 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
3305
3306 <p><blockquote><pre>
3307 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
3308 </pre></blockquote><p>
3309
3310 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
3311
3312 <p><blockquote><pre>
3313 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
3314 </pre></blockquote><p>
3315
3316 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
3317 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
3318
3319 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
3320 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
3321 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
3322 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
3323 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
3324 Jessie is released.</p>
3325
3326 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
3327 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
3328 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
3329 line.</p>
3330
3331       </div>
3332       <div class="tags">
3333
3334
3335         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>.
3336
3337
3338       </div>
3339     </div>
3340     <div class="padding"></div>
3341
3342     <div class="entry">
3343       <div class="title">
3344         <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>
3345       </div>
3346       <div class="date">
3347         10th November 2014
3348       </div>
3349       <div class="body">
3350         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
3351 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
3352 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
3353
3354 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
3355 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
3356 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
3357 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
3358 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
3359 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
3360 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
3361 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
3362 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
3363 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
3364 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
3365 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
3366 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
3367 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
3368 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
3369
3370 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
3371 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
3372 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
3373 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
3374 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
3375 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
3376 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
3377 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
3378 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
3379 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
3380 were fairly easy, and
3381 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
3382 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
3383 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
3384 useful approach.</p>
3385
3386 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
3387 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
3388 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
3389 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
3390 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
3391 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
3392 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
3393 this:</p>
3394
3395 <p><blockquote><pre>
3396 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
3397   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
3398 </pre></blockquote></p>
3399
3400 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
3401 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
3402
3403 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
3404 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
3405 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
3406 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
3407 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
3408 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
3409 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
3410 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
3411 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
3412 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
3413 system.</p>
3414
3415 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
3416 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
3417 SMTorP. :)</p>
3418
3419       </div>
3420       <div class="tags">
3421
3422
3423         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>.
3424
3425
3426       </div>
3427     </div>
3428     <div class="padding"></div>
3429
3430     <div class="entry">
3431       <div class="title">
3432         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
3433       </div>
3434       <div class="date">
3435         27th October 2014
3436       </div>
3437       <div class="body">
3438         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
3439 sent out
3440 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
3441 announcement</a>:</p>
3442
3443 <pre>
3444 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
3445 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
3446
3447 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
3448 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
3449 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
3450 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
3451 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
3452 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
3453 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
3454
3455 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
3456 installation instructions are available, including detailed
3457 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
3458 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
3459 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
3460 of at least 5 characters!
3461
3462  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
3463
3464 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
3465 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
3466 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
3467 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
3468 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
3469
3470 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
3471 mostly in Germany and Norway.
3472
3473 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
3474 ===============================
3475
3476 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
3477 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
3478 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
3479 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
3480 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
3481 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
3482 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
3483 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
3484 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
3485 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
3486 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
3487 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
3488 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
3489 environment.
3490
3491  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
3492  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
3493
3494 Full release notes and manual
3495 =============================
3496
3497 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
3498 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
3499 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
3500 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
3501 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
3502
3503  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
3504  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
3505
3506 Where to get it
3507 ---------------
3508
3509 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
3510
3511  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
3512  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
3513  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
3514
3515 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
3516
3517 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
3518 ===============================================================================
3519
3520
3521 Installation changes
3522 --------------------
3523
3524  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
3525
3526 Software updates
3527 ----------------
3528
3529 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
3530
3531  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
3532  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
3533    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
3534    choose one of the others see manual.)
3535  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
3536  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
3537  * GOsa 2.7.4
3538  * LTSP 5.5.4
3539  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
3540  * new boot framework: systemd
3541  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
3542  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
3543  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
3544  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
3545  * golearn 0.9
3546  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
3547  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
3548  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
3549    installation.
3550  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
3551    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
3552
3553  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
3554  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
3555
3556 Fixed bugs
3557 ----------
3558
3559  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
3560    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
3561    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
3562  * and many others.
3563
3564 Documentation and translation updates
3565 -------------------------------------
3566
3567  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
3568    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
3569    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
3570
3571 Other changes
3572 -------------
3573
3574  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
3575    server takes more time.
3576  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
3577    doesn't work.
3578
3579 Regressions / known problems
3580 ----------------------------
3581
3582  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
3583    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
3584    and Debian bug #762103).
3585  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
3586    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
3587  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
3588    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
3589    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
3590
3591 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
3592
3593  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
3594
3595 How to report bugs
3596 ------------------
3597
3598 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
3599
3600 About Debian
3601 ============
3602
3603 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
3604 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
3605 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
3606 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
3607 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
3608 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
3609 operating system.
3610
3611 Contact Information
3612 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
3613 mail to press@debian.org.
3614
3615  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
3616 </pre>
3617
3618       </div>
3619       <div class="tags">
3620
3621
3622         Tags: <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>.
3623
3624
3625       </div>
3626     </div>
3627     <div class="padding"></div>
3628
3629     <div class="entry">
3630       <div class="title">
3631         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
3632       </div>
3633       <div class="date">
3634         23rd October 2014
3635       </div>
3636       <div class="body">
3637         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
3638 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
3639 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
3640 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
3641 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
3642 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
3643 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
3644 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
3645 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
3646 live.</p>
3647
3648 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
3649 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
3650 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
3651 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
3652 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
3653 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
3654 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
3655 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
3656
3657       </div>
3658       <div class="tags">
3659
3660
3661         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
3662
3663
3664       </div>
3665     </div>
3666     <div class="padding"></div>
3667
3668     <div class="entry">
3669       <div class="title">
3670         <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>
3671       </div>
3672       <div class="date">
3673         22nd October 2014
3674       </div>
3675       <div class="body">
3676         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
3677 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
3678 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
3679 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
3680 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
3681 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
3682 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
3683 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
3684 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
3685 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
3686 lists I recently took over:</p>
3687
3688 <p><blockquote><pre>
3689 % time listadmin xiph
3690 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
3691 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
3692
3693 real    0m1.709s
3694 user    0m0.232s
3695 sys     0m0.012s
3696 %
3697 </pre></blockquote></p>
3698
3699 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
3700 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
3701 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
3702 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
3703 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
3704 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
3705 program.</p>
3706
3707 <p>If you install
3708 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
3709 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
3710 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
3711
3712 <p><blockquote><pre>
3713 username username@example.org
3714 spamlevel 23
3715 default discard
3716 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
3717
3718 password secret
3719 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
3720 mailman-list@lists.example.com
3721
3722 password hidden
3723 other-list@otherserver.example.org
3724 </pre></blockquote></p>
3725
3726 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
3727 learn the details.</p>
3728
3729 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
3730 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
3731 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
3732 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
3733
3734 <p><blockquote><pre>
3735 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
3736 </pre></blockquote></p>
3737
3738 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
3739 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
3740 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
3741 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
3742 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
3743 email.</p>
3744
3745 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
3746 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
3747 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
3748 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
3749 software.</p>
3750
3751 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3752 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3753 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3754
3755 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
3756 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
3757 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
3758 sure why.</p>
3759
3760       </div>
3761       <div class="tags">
3762
3763
3764         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>.
3765
3766
3767       </div>
3768     </div>
3769     <div class="padding"></div>
3770
3771     <div class="entry">
3772       <div class="title">
3773         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
3774       </div>
3775       <div class="date">
3776         17th October 2014
3777       </div>
3778       <div class="body">
3779         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
3780 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
3781 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
3782 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
3783 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
3784 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
3785 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
3786
3787 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
3788 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
3789 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
3790 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
3791 of this story.)</p>
3792
3793 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
3794 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
3795 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
3796 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
3797 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
3798 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
3799 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
3800 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
3801 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
3802 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
3803
3804 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
3805 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
3806 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
3807 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
3808
3809 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
3810 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
3811
3812 <p><blockquote><pre>
3813 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
3814 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
3815 </pre></blockquote></p>
3816
3817 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
3818 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
3819 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
3820 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
3821 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
3822 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
3823 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
3824 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
3825
3826 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
3827 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
3828
3829 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
3830 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
3831 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
3832 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
3833 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
3834
3835 <p><blockquote><pre>
3836 Task: isenkram-packages
3837 Section: hardware
3838 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3839  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
3840  proposed.
3841 Test-new-install: show show
3842 Relevance: 8
3843 Packages: for-current-hardware
3844
3845 Task: isenkram-firmware
3846 Section: hardware
3847 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3848  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
3849  packages are proposed.
3850 Test-new-install: mark show
3851 Relevance: 8
3852 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
3853 </pre></blockquote></p>
3854
3855 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
3856 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
3857 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
3858 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
3859 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
3860
3861 <p><blockquote><pre>
3862 #!/bin/sh
3863 #
3864 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
3865 export PATH
3866 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
3867 </pre></blockquote></p>
3868
3869 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
3870 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
3871
3872 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
3873 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
3874 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
3875 install.</p>
3876
3877 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
3878 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
3879 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
3880
3881       </div>
3882       <div class="tags">
3883
3884
3885         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>.
3886
3887
3888       </div>
3889     </div>
3890     <div class="padding"></div>
3891
3892     <div class="entry">
3893       <div class="title">
3894         <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>
3895       </div>
3896       <div class="date">
3897          4th October 2014
3898       </div>
3899       <div class="body">
3900         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
3901 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
3902 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
3903 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
3904
3905 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
3906
3907 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
3908 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
3909 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
3910
3911       </div>
3912       <div class="tags">
3913
3914
3915         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>.
3916
3917
3918       </div>
3919     </div>
3920     <div class="padding"></div>
3921
3922     <div class="entry">
3923       <div class="title">
3924         <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>
3925       </div>
3926       <div class="date">
3927          4th October 2014
3928       </div>
3929       <div class="body">
3930         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
3931 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
3932 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
3933 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
3934 Dibb.</p>
3935
3936 <p>I just wrapped up
3937 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
3938 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
3939 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
3940 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
3941 0.17.</p>
3942
3943 <ul>
3944
3945  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
3946  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
3947    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
3948  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
3949  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
3950  <li>Fix include orders</li>
3951  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
3952  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
3953  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
3954    the palette size is the same.</li>
3955  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
3956  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
3957  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
3958  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
3959    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
3960
3961 </ul>
3962
3963 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
3964 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
3965 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
3966
3967       </div>
3968       <div class="tags">
3969
3970
3971         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>.
3972
3973
3974       </div>
3975     </div>
3976     <div class="padding"></div>
3977
3978     <div class="entry">
3979       <div class="title">
3980         <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>
3981       </div>
3982       <div class="date">
3983         26th September 2014
3984       </div>
3985       <div class="body">
3986         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3987 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
3988 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
3989 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
3990 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
3991 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
3992 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
3993 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
3994 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
3995 future.  The
3996 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
3997 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
3998 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
3999 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
4000 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
4001
4002 <p>First, download the test ISO via
4003 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
4004 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
4005 or rsync (use
4006 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
4007 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
4008 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
4009 install with some tweaking.</p>
4010
4011 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
4012 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
4013
4014 <p><blockquote><pre>
4015 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
4016 </pre></blockquote></p>
4017
4018 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
4019 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
4020 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
4021 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
4022
4023 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
4024 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
4025 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
4026 your need.</p>
4027
4028 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
4029 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
4030 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
4031 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
4032 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
4033 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
4034 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
4035 days.</p>
4036
4037 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
4038 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
4039 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
4040 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
4041 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
4042 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
4043 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
4044 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
4045 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
4046
4047 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
4048 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
4049 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
4050
4051       </div>
4052       <div class="tags">
4053
4054
4055         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>.
4056
4057
4058       </div>
4059     </div>
4060     <div class="padding"></div>
4061
4062     <div class="entry">
4063       <div class="title">
4064         <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>
4065       </div>
4066       <div class="date">
4067         25th September 2014
4068       </div>
4069       <div class="body">
4070         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
4071 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
4072 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
4073 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
4074 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
4075 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
4076 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
4077 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
4078 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
4079 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
4080 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
4081 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
4082 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
4083
4084 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
4085 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
4086 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
4087 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
4088 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
4089 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
4090 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
4091 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
4092 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
4093 list</a>. :)</p>
4094
4095       </div>
4096       <div class="tags">
4097
4098
4099         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>.
4100
4101
4102       </div>
4103     </div>
4104     <div class="padding"></div>
4105
4106     <div class="entry">
4107       <div class="title">
4108         <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>
4109       </div>
4110       <div class="date">
4111         16th September 2014
4112       </div>
4113       <div class="body">
4114         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
4115 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
4116 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
4117 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
4118 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
4119 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
4120 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
4121 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
4122 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
4123 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
4124 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
4125 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
4126 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
4127 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
4128
4129 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
4130 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
4131 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
4132 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
4133 depend on the small and clever package
4134 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
4135 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
4136 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
4137 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
4138 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
4139 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
4140 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
4141 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
4142 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
4143 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
4144 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
4145
4146 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
4147 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
4148 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
4149 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
4150 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
4151 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
4152 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
4153 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
4154 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
4155 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
4156 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
4157 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
4158 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
4159 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
4160 dialog.</p>
4161
4162 <p><table>
4163
4164 <tr>
4165 <th>Machine/setup</th>
4166 <th>Original tasksel</th>
4167 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
4168 <th>Reduction</th>
4169 </tr>
4170
4171 <tr>
4172 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
4173 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
4174 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
4175 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
4176 </tr>
4177
4178 <tr>
4179 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
4180 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
4181 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
4182 <td>23 min 40%</td>
4183 </tr>
4184
4185 <tr>
4186 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
4187 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
4188 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
4189 <td>11 min 50%</td>
4190 </tr>
4191
4192 <tr>
4193 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
4194 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
4195 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
4196 <td>2 min 33%</td>
4197 </tr>
4198
4199 <tr>
4200 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
4201 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
4202 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
4203 <td>4 min 21%</td>
4204 </tr>
4205
4206 </table></p>
4207
4208 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
4209 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
4210 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
4211 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
4212 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
4213 installed.</p>
4214
4215 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
4216 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
4217 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
4218 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
4219 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
4220 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
4221 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
4222 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
4223 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
4224 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
4225 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
4226 for the entire installation.</p>
4227
4228 <p>I've implemented this in the
4229 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
4230 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
4231 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
4232 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
4233 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
4234
4235 <p><blockquote><pre>
4236 #!/bin/sh
4237 set -e
4238 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
4239 info() {
4240     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
4241 }
4242 error() {
4243     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
4244 }
4245 override_install() {
4246     apt-install eatmydata || true
4247     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
4248         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
4249             file=/usr/bin/$bin
4250             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
4251             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
4252                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
4253                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
4254                     > /target$file.edu
4255                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
4256                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
4257                     --rename --quiet --add $file
4258                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
4259             else
4260                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
4261             fi
4262         done
4263     else
4264         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
4265     fi
4266 }
4267
4268 override_install
4269 </pre></blockquote></p>
4270
4271 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
4272 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
4273
4274 <p><blockquote><pre>
4275 #! /bin/sh -e
4276 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
4277 error() {
4278     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
4279 }
4280 remove_install_override() {
4281     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
4282         file=/usr/bin/$bin
4283         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
4284             rm /target$file
4285             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
4286                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
4287             rm /target$file.edu
4288         else
4289             error "Missing divert for $file."
4290         fi
4291     done
4292     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
4293 }
4294
4295 remove_install_override
4296 </pre></blockquote></p>
4297
4298 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
4299 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
4300 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
4301
4302 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
4303 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
4304 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
4305 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
4306 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
4307 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
4308 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
4309 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
4310 everyone.</p>
4311
4312 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
4313 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
4314 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
4315 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
4316
4317 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
4318 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
4319 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
4320 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
4321 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
4322
4323 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
4324 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
4325 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
4326 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
4327 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
4328
4329       </div>
4330       <div class="tags">
4331
4332
4333         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>.
4334
4335
4336       </div>
4337     </div>
4338     <div class="padding"></div>
4339
4340     <div class="entry">
4341       <div class="title">
4342         <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>
4343       </div>
4344       <div class="date">
4345         10th September 2014
4346       </div>
4347       <div class="body">
4348         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
4349 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
4350 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
4351 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
4352 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
4353 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
4354 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
4355 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
4356 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
4357 those problems are gone now.</p>
4358
4359 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
4360 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
4361 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
4362 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
4363 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
4364
4365 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
4366 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
4367 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
4368
4369 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
4370 line:</p>
4371
4372 <p><blockquote><pre>
4373 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
4374 </pre></blockquote></p>
4375
4376 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
4377 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
4378 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
4379 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
4380
4381 <p><blockquote><pre>
4382 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
4383 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
4384 %
4385 </pre></blockquote></p>
4386
4387 <p>Now if only
4388 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
4389 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
4390 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
4391 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
4392 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
4393 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
4394 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
4395 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
4396 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
4397
4398       </div>
4399       <div class="tags">
4400
4401
4402         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>.
4403
4404
4405       </div>
4406     </div>
4407     <div class="padding"></div>
4408
4409     <div class="entry">
4410       <div class="title">
4411         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
4412       </div>
4413       <div class="date">
4414         25th August 2014
4415       </div>
4416       <div class="body">
4417         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
4418 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
4419 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
4420 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
4421 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
4422 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
4423 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
4424 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
4425 am not sure.
4426 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
4427 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
4428 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
4429 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
4430 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
4431 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
4432 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
4433 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
4434 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
4435 licenses are.</p>
4436
4437 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
4438 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
4439 end user</a>
4440 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
4441 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
4442
4443 <p><blockquote>
4444 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
4445 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
4446
4447 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
4448 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
4449 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
4450 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
4451 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
4452 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
4453 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
4454 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
4455 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
4456 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
4457 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
4458 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
4459 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
4460 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
4461 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
4462 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
4463 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
4464 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
4465
4466 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
4467 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
4468
4469 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
4470 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
4471 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
4472 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
4473 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
4474 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
4475 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
4476 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
4477 </blockquote></p>
4478
4479 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
4480 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
4481
4482 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
4483 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
4484
4485 <p><blockquote>
4486
4487 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
4488 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
4489 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
4490 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
4491 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
4492 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
4493 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
4494 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
4495 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
4496 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
4497 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
4498 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
4499
4500 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
4501 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
4502 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
4503 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
4504 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
4505 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
4506 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
4507 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
4508 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
4509 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
4510 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
4511 additional details.</p>
4512
4513 </blockquote></p>
4514
4515 <p>Some free software like
4516 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
4517 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
4518 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
4519 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
4520
4521       </div>
4522       <div class="tags">
4523
4524
4525         Tags: <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/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</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>.
4526
4527
4528       </div>
4529     </div>
4530     <div class="padding"></div>
4531
4532     <div class="entry">
4533       <div class="title">
4534         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
4535       </div>
4536       <div class="date">
4537         31st July 2014
4538       </div>
4539       <div class="body">
4540         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
4541 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4542 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
4543 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
4544 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
4545 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
4546
4547 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4548
4549 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
4550 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
4551 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
4552 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
4553 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
4554 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
4555 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
4556 works with Windows . :-(</p>
4557
4558 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
4559 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
4560 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
4561 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
4562 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
4563 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
4564
4565 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4566 project?</strong></p>
4567
4568 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
4569 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
4570 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
4571 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
4572 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
4573 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
4574 with this job.</p>
4575
4576 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4577 Edu?</strong></p>
4578
4579 <p>The independence.</p>
4580
4581 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
4582 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
4583 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
4584
4585 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
4586 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
4587 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
4588 working reliable. </p>
4589
4590 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
4591 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
4592 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
4593 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
4594 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
4595 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
4596 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
4597 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
4598
4599 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4600 Edu?</strong></p>
4601
4602 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
4603 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
4604 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
4605
4606 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4607
4608 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
4609 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
4610
4611 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4612 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4613
4614 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
4615 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
4616 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
4617 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
4618 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
4619 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
4620 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
4621
4622       </div>
4623       <div class="tags">
4624
4625
4626         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
4627
4628
4629       </div>
4630     </div>
4631     <div class="padding"></div>
4632
4633     <div class="entry">
4634       <div class="title">
4635         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
4636       </div>
4637       <div class="date">
4638         23rd July 2014
4639       </div>
4640       <div class="body">
4641         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
4642 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
4643 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
4644 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
4645 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
4646 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
4647 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
4648 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
4649 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
4650 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
4651 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
4652 the translation show this very well:</p>
4653
4654 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
4655
4656 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
4657 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
4658 project pages and the
4659 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
4660 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
4661 and HTML version available in the
4662 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
4663 directory</a>.</p>
4664
4665 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
4666 you find any.</p>
4667
4668       </div>
4669       <div class="tags">
4670
4671
4672         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
4673
4674
4675       </div>
4676     </div>
4677     <div class="padding"></div>
4678
4679     <div class="entry">
4680       <div class="title">
4681         <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>
4682       </div>
4683       <div class="date">
4684         17th June 2014
4685       </div>
4686       <div class="body">
4687         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4688 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
4689 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
4690 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
4691 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
4692
4693 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
4694 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
4695 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
4696 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
4697 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
4698 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
4699 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
4700 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
4701 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
4702 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
4703 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
4704 goals.</p>
4705
4706 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
4707 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
4708 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
4709 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
4710 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
4711 chapters together into one large web page (aka
4712 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
4713 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
4714 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
4715 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
4716 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
4717 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
4718 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
4719 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
4720 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
4721 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
4722 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
4723 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
4724 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
4725 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
4726 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
4727 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
4728 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
4729 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
4730
4731 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
4732 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
4733 track the English original.  For this we use the
4734 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
4735 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
4736 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
4737 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
4738 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
4739 files), which the translations update with the native language
4740 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
4741 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
4742 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
4743 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
4744 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
4745 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
4746 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
4747 of the documentation.</p>
4748
4749 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
4750 recommend using
4751 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
4752 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
4753 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
4754 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
4755 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
4756 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
4757 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
4758 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
4759
4760 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
4761 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
4762 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
4763 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
4764 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
4765 translated images by storing translated versions in
4766 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
4767 package maintainers know more.</p>
4768
4769 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
4770 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
4771 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
4772 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
4773 PDF version</a> or the
4774 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
4775 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
4776 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
4777
4778 <p>To learn more, check out
4779 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
4780 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
4781 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
4782 manual on the wiki</a> and
4783 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
4784 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
4785
4786       </div>
4787       <div class="tags">
4788
4789
4790         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>.
4791
4792
4793       </div>
4794     </div>
4795     <div class="padding"></div>
4796
4797     <div class="entry">
4798       <div class="title">
4799         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
4800       </div>
4801       <div class="date">
4802         29th May 2014
4803       </div>
4804       <div class="body">
4805         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
4806 in my car, connected to
4807 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
4808 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
4809 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
4810 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
4811 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
4812 such car computer.</p>
4813
4814 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
4815
4816 <ul>
4817
4818  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
4819
4820  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
4821    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
4822    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
4823    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
4824    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
4825
4826  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
4827    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
4828    route.</li>
4829
4830  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
4831
4832  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
4833    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
4834    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
4835    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
4836    connection do not work.</li>
4837
4838  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
4839    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
4840
4841  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
4842    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
4843
4844  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
4845    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
4846
4847 </ul>
4848
4849 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
4850 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
4851
4852       </div>
4853       <div class="tags">
4854
4855
4856         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4857
4858
4859       </div>
4860     </div>
4861     <div class="padding"></div>
4862
4863     <div class="entry">
4864       <div class="title">
4865         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
4866       </div>
4867       <div class="date">
4868         29th April 2014
4869       </div>
4870       <div class="body">
4871         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
4872 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
4873 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
4874 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
4875 newer AVM2 format - see
4876 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
4877 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
4878 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
4879 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
4880 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
4881 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
4882 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
4883 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
4884 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
4885 sites do not work yet.</p>
4886
4887 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
4888 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
4889 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
4890 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
4891 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
4892 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
4893 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
4894 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
4895 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
4896 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
4897 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
4898
4899 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
4900 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
4901 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
4902 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
4903 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
4904 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
4905 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
4906
4907 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
4908 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
4909 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
4910 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
4911 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
4912
4913       </div>
4914       <div class="tags">
4915
4916
4917         Tags: <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>.
4918
4919
4920       </div>
4921     </div>
4922     <div class="padding"></div>
4923
4924     <div class="entry">
4925       <div class="title">
4926         <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>
4927       </div>
4928       <div class="date">
4929         23rd April 2014
4930       </div>
4931       <div class="body">
4932         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
4933 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
4934 So I implemented one, using
4935 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
4936 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
4937 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
4938 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
4939 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
4940 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
4941
4942 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
4943 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
4944 packages to install.  The first part is in
4945 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
4946 this:</p>
4947
4948 <p><blockquote><pre>
4949 Task: isenkram
4950 Section: hardware
4951 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
4952  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
4953  proposed.
4954 Test-new-install: mark show
4955 Relevance: 8
4956 Packages: for-current-hardware
4957 </pre></blockquote></p>
4958
4959 <p>The second part is in
4960 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
4961 this:</p>
4962
4963 <p><blockquote><pre>
4964 #!/bin/sh
4965 #
4966 (
4967     isenkram-lookup
4968     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
4969 ) | sort -u
4970 </pre></blockquote></p>
4971
4972 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
4973 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
4974 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
4975 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
4976 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
4977 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
4978
4979 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
4980 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
4981 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
4982 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
4983 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
4984 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
4985 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
4986 the python-apt code (bug
4987 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
4988 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
4989 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
4990 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
4991 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
4992 unstable today.</p>
4993
4994 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
4995 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
4996 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
4997 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
4998 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
4999 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
5000 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
5001 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
5002 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
5003
5004 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
5005 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
5006 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
5007 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
5008 package.  See also
5009 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
5010 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
5011 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
5012 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
5013
5014       </div>
5015       <div class="tags">
5016
5017
5018         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>.
5019
5020
5021       </div>
5022     </div>
5023     <div class="padding"></div>
5024
5025     <div class="entry">
5026       <div class="title">
5027         <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>
5028       </div>
5029       <div class="date">
5030         15th April 2014
5031       </div>
5032       <div class="body">
5033         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
5034 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
5035 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
5036 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
5037 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
5038 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
5039
5040 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
5041 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
5042 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
5043 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
5044 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
5045 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
5046 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
5047
5048 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
5049 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
5050 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
5051 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
5052 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
5053 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
5054 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
5055 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
5056 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
5057 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
5058 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
5059 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
5060
5061 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
5062 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
5063 become root:</p>
5064
5065 <p><pre>
5066 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
5067   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
5068   u-boot-tools
5069 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
5070   freedom-maker
5071 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
5072 </pre></p>
5073
5074 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
5075 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
5076 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
5077 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
5078 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
5079 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
5080 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
5081 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
5082
5083 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
5084 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
5085 the preseed values:</p>
5086
5087 <p><pre>
5088 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
5089 </pre></p>
5090
5091 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
5092 it still work.</p>
5093
5094 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
5095 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
5096 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
5097 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
5098 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
5099 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
5100 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
5101
5102 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
5103 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
5104 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
5105 irc.debian.org)</a> and
5106 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
5107 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
5108
5109       </div>
5110       <div class="tags">
5111
5112
5113         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>.
5114
5115
5116       </div>
5117     </div>
5118     <div class="padding"></div>
5119
5120     <div class="entry">
5121       <div class="title">
5122         <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>
5123       </div>
5124       <div class="date">
5125          9th April 2014
5126       </div>
5127       <div class="body">
5128         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
5129 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
5130 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
5131 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
5132 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
5133 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
5134 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
5135 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
5136 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
5137 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
5138 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
5139 have looked at a system called
5140 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
5141 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
5142
5143 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
5144 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
5145 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
5146 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
5147 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
5148 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
5149 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
5150 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
5151 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
5152 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
5153 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
5154 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
5155 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
5156
5157 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
5158 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
5159 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
5160 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
5161 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
5162 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
5163 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
5164 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
5165 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
5166 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
5167 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
5168 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
5169 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
5170 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
5171 account.</p>
5172
5173 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
5174 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
5175 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
5176 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
5177 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
5178 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
5179 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
5180
5181 <p><blockquote><pre>
5182 [s3c]
5183 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
5184 backend-login: API-login
5185 backend-password: API-password
5186 fs-passphrase: local-password
5187 </pre></blockquote></p>
5188
5189 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
5190 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
5191 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
5192 details and password to create it:</p>
5193
5194 <p><blockquote><pre>
5195 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
5196 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
5197   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
5198 Enter backend login:
5199 Enter backend password:
5200 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
5201 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
5202 Enter encryption password:
5203 Confirm encryption password:
5204 Generating random encryption key...
5205 Creating metadata tables...
5206 Dumping metadata...
5207 ..objects..
5208 ..blocks..
5209 ..inodes..
5210 ..inode_blocks..
5211 ..symlink_targets..
5212 ..names..
5213 ..contents..
5214 ..ext_attributes..
5215 Compressing and uploading metadata...
5216 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
5217 # </pre></blockquote></p>
5218
5219 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
5220
5221 <p><blockquote><pre>
5222 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
5223   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
5224 Using 4 upload threads.
5225 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
5226 Reading metadata...
5227 ..objects..
5228 ..blocks..
5229 ..inodes..
5230 ..inode_blocks..
5231 ..symlink_targets..
5232 ..names..
5233 ..contents..
5234 ..ext_attributes..
5235 Mounting filesystem...
5236 # df -h /s3ql
5237 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
5238 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
5239 #
5240 </pre></blockquote></p>
5241
5242 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
5243 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
5244 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
5245 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
5246 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
5247 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
5248
5249 <p><blockquote><pre>
5250 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
5251 #
5252 </pre></blockquote></p>
5253
5254 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
5255 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
5256 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
5257 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
5258 file system:</p>
5259
5260 <p><blockquote><pre>
5261 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
5262 Using cached metadata.
5263 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
5264 Checking DB integrity...
5265 Creating temporary extra indices...
5266 Checking lost+found...
5267 Checking cached objects...
5268 Checking names (refcounts)...
5269 Checking contents (names)...
5270 Checking contents (inodes)...
5271 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
5272 Checking objects (reference counts)...
5273 Checking objects (backend)...
5274 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
5275 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
5276 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
5277 Checking objects (sizes)...
5278 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
5279 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
5280 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
5281 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
5282 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
5283 Checking inodes (sizes)...
5284 Checking extended attributes (names)...
5285 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
5286 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
5287 Checking directory reachability...
5288 Checking unix conventions...
5289 Checking referential integrity...
5290 Dropping temporary indices...
5291 Backing up old metadata...
5292 Dumping metadata...
5293 ..objects..
5294 ..blocks..
5295 ..inodes..
5296 ..inode_blocks..
5297 ..symlink_targets..
5298 ..names..
5299 ..contents..
5300 ..ext_attributes..
5301 Compressing and uploading metadata...
5302 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
5303 #
5304 </pre></blockquote></p>
5305
5306 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
5307 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
5308 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
5309 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
5310 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
5311 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
5312 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
5313 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
5314 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
5315 working set.</p>
5316
5317 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
5318 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
5319 busy:</p>
5320
5321 <p><blockquote><pre>
5322 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
5323   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
5324 Using 8 upload threads.
5325 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
5326 #
5327 </pre></blockquote></p>
5328
5329 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
5330 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
5331 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
5332 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
5333 s3qlctrl:
5334
5335 <p><blockquote><pre>
5336 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
5337 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
5338 #
5339 </pre></blockquote></p>
5340
5341 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
5342 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
5343 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
5344 a report:</p>
5345
5346 <p><blockquote><pre>
5347 # s3qlstat /s3ql
5348 Directory entries:    9141
5349 Inodes:               9143
5350 Data blocks:          8851
5351 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
5352 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
5353 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
5354 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
5355 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
5356 #
5357 </pre></blockquote></p>
5358
5359 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
5360 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
5361 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
5362 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
5363 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
5364 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
5365 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
5366 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
5367 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
5368 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
5369 best.</p>
5370
5371 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
5372 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
5373 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
5374 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
5375 poster is titled
5376 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
5377 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
5378 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
5379 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
5380 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
5381
5382 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
5383 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
5384 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
5385 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
5386 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
5387 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
5388 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
5389 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
5390
5391 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
5392 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
5393 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
5394 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
5395 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
5396 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
5397 only read from it.</p>
5398
5399 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5400 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5401 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5402
5403       </div>
5404       <div class="tags">
5405
5406
5407         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>.
5408
5409
5410       </div>
5411     </div>
5412     <div class="padding"></div>
5413
5414     <div class="entry">
5415       <div class="title">
5416         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
5417       </div>
5418       <div class="date">
5419          1st April 2014
5420       </div>
5421       <div class="body">
5422         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
5423 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
5424 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
5425 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
5426 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
5427 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
5428 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
5429 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
5430 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
5431 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
5432 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
5433 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
5434 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
5435
5436 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
5437 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
5438 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
5439 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
5440 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
5441 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
5442 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
5443 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
5444 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
5445 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
5446 Linux.</p>
5447
5448 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
5449 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
5450 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
5451 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
5452 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
5453 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
5454 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
5455 Windows before metro).</p>
5456
5457 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
5458 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
5459 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
5460 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
5461 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
5462 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
5463 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
5464 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
5465 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
5466 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
5467 old Windows binaries, check it out by
5468 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
5469 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
5470 image.</p>
5471
5472       </div>
5473       <div class="tags">
5474
5475
5476         Tags: <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/reactos">reactos</a>.
5477
5478
5479       </div>
5480     </div>
5481     <div class="padding"></div>
5482
5483     <div class="entry">
5484       <div class="title">
5485         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
5486       </div>
5487       <div class="date">
5488         30th March 2014
5489       </div>
5490       <div class="body">
5491         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
5492 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
5493 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
5494 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
5495 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
5496
5497 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5498
5499 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
5500 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
5501 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
5502 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
5503 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
5504
5505 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
5506 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
5507 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
5508
5509 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
5510 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
5511 hunger.</p>
5512
5513 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5514 project?</strong></p>
5515
5516 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
5517 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
5518 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
5519 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
5520 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
5521 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
5522 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
5523 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
5524 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
5525 running.  I just loved it.</p>
5526
5527 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5528 Edu?</strong></p>
5529
5530 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
5531 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
5532 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
5533 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
5534 be made of steel.</p>
5535
5536 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5537 Edu?</strong></p>
5538
5539 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
5540
5541 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
5542 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
5543 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
5544 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
5545 or dropped.</p>
5546
5547 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
5548 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
5549 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
5550 discourage many people too.</p>
5551
5552 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5553
5554 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
5555 Virtualbox.</p>
5556
5557
5558 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5559 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5560
5561 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
5562 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
5563 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
5564 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
5565 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
5566 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
5567 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
5568 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
5569 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
5570
5571       </div>
5572       <div class="tags">
5573
5574
5575         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
5576
5577
5578       </div>
5579     </div>
5580     <div class="padding"></div>
5581
5582     <div class="entry">
5583       <div class="title">
5584         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
5585       </div>
5586       <div class="date">
5587         25th March 2014
5588       </div>
5589       <div class="body">
5590         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
5591 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
5592 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
5593 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
5594 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
5595 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
5596 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
5597 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
5598 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
5599
5600 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
5601 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
5602 looked a given way.  Such
5603 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
5604 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
5605 called a
5606 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
5607 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
5608 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
5609 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
5610 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
5611 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
5612 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
5613 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
5614 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
5615 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
5616 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
5617 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
5618 There are several commercial services around providing such
5619 timestamping.  A quick search for
5620 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
5621 service</a>" pointed me to at least
5622 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
5623 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
5624 Vadis</a>,
5625 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
5626 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
5627 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
5628 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
5629
5630 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
5631 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
5632 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
5633 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
5634 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
5635 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
5636 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
5637 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
5638 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
5639 Greifswald.</p>
5640
5641 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
5642 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
5643 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
5644 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
5645 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
5646
5647 <p><blockquote><pre>
5648 #!/bin/sh
5649 set -e
5650 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
5651 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
5652 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
5653 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
5654 cafile=chain.txt
5655 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
5656     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
5657 fi
5658 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
5659     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
5660 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
5661 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
5662 base64 < "$resfile"
5663 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
5664 </pre></blockquote></p>
5665
5666 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
5667 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
5668 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
5669 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
5670 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
5671 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
5672 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
5673 changed.</p>
5674
5675 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
5676 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
5677 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
5678 to set up?</p>
5679
5680       </div>
5681       <div class="tags">
5682
5683
5684         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5685
5686
5687       </div>
5688     </div>
5689     <div class="padding"></div>
5690
5691     <div class="entry">
5692       <div class="title">
5693         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
5694       </div>
5695       <div class="date">
5696         21st March 2014
5697       </div>
5698       <div class="body">
5699         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
5700 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
5701 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
5702 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
5703 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
5704 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
5705 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
5706
5707 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
5708 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
5709 tried using
5710 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
5711 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
5712 and program
5713 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
5714 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
5715 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
5716 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
5717 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
5718 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
5719 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
5720 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
5721 this method.</p>
5722
5723 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
5724 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
5725 problem is
5726 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
5727 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
5728 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
5729 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
5730 DVD structures, as the python library
5731 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
5732 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
5733 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
5734 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
5735 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
5736 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
5737
5738 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
5739 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
5740
5741       </div>
5742       <div class="tags">
5743
5744
5745         Tags: <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/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5746
5747
5748       </div>
5749     </div>
5750     <div class="padding"></div>
5751
5752     <div class="entry">
5753       <div class="title">
5754         <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>
5755       </div>
5756       <div class="date">
5757         14th March 2014
5758       </div>
5759       <div class="body">
5760         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
5761 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
5762 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
5763 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
5764 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
5765 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
5766 release (0.2).</p>
5767
5768 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
5769 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
5770 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
5771 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
5772 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
5773 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
5774 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
5775 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
5776 and build using
5777 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
5778 with a user with sudo access to become root:
5779
5780 <pre>
5781 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
5782   freedom-maker
5783 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
5784   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
5785   u-boot-tools
5786 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
5787 </pre>
5788
5789 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
5790 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
5791 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
5792 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
5793 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
5794 kpartx call.</p>
5795
5796 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
5797 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
5798 the preseed values:</p>
5799
5800 <pre>
5801 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
5802 </pre>
5803
5804 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
5805 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
5806 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
5807 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
5808 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
5809 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
5810
5811 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
5812 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
5813 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
5814 irc.debian.org)</a> and
5815 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
5816 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
5817
5818       </div>
5819       <div class="tags">
5820
5821
5822         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>.
5823
5824
5825       </div>
5826     </div>
5827     <div class="padding"></div>
5828
5829     <div class="entry">
5830       <div class="title">
5831         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
5832       </div>
5833       <div class="date">
5834         12th March 2014
5835       </div>
5836       <div class="body">
5837         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
5838 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
5839 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
5840 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
5841 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
5842 document this better when one of the customers of
5843 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
5844 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
5845 get this working are the following:</p>
5846
5847 <p><ol>
5848
5849 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
5850 example host here.</li>
5851
5852 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
5853 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
5854
5855 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
5856 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
5857
5858 </ol></p>
5859
5860 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
5861 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
5862 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
5863 started).</p>
5864
5865 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
5866 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
5867
5868 <p><blockquote><pre>
5869 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
5870 Export list for nas-server:
5871 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
5872 root@tjener:~#
5873 </pre></blockquote></p>
5874
5875 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
5876 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
5877 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
5878 NFS access.</p>
5879
5880 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
5881 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
5882 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
5883
5884 <p><blockquote><pre>
5885 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5886 </pre></blockquote></p>
5887
5888 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
5889 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
5890 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
5891 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
5892
5893 <p><blockquote><pre>
5894 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5895 objectClass: automount
5896 cn: nas-server
5897 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5898
5899 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5900 objectClass: top
5901 objectClass: automountMap
5902 ou: auto.nas-server
5903
5904 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5905 objectClass: automount
5906 cn: /
5907 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
5908 </pre></blockquote></p>
5909
5910 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
5911 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
5912 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
5913
5914 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
5915 the storage server directly by just visiting the
5916 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
5917 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
5918
5919       </div>
5920       <div class="tags">
5921
5922
5923         Tags: <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>.
5924
5925
5926       </div>
5927     </div>
5928     <div class="padding"></div>
5929
5930     <div class="entry">
5931       <div class="title">
5932         <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>
5933       </div>
5934       <div class="date">
5935         22nd February 2014
5936       </div>
5937       <div class="body">
5938         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
5939 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
5940 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
5941 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
5942 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
5943 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
5944 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
5945 proper home since then.</p>
5946
5947 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
5948 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
5949 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
5950 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
5951 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
5952
5953 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
5954 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
5955 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
5956 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
5957 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
5958 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
5959 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
5960 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
5961 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
5962
5963       </div>
5964       <div class="tags">
5965
5966
5967         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>.
5968
5969
5970       </div>
5971     </div>
5972     <div class="padding"></div>
5973
5974     <div class="entry">
5975       <div class="title">
5976         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
5977       </div>
5978       <div class="date">
5979          3rd February 2014
5980       </div>
5981       <div class="body">
5982         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
5983 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
5984 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
5985 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
5986 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
5987 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
5988 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
5989 <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>,
5990 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
5991
5992 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
5993 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
5994 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
5995 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
5996 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
5997 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
5998
5999 <p><blockquote><pre>
6000 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
6001 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
6002 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
6003 dhclient /dev/eth0
6004 </pre></blockquote></p>
6005
6006 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
6007 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
6008 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
6009
6010 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
6011 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
6012 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
6013 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
6014 side.</p>
6015
6016 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
6017 stuff:</p>
6018
6019 <p><blockquote><pre>
6020 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
6021 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
6022 EOF
6023 apt-get update
6024 apt-get dist-upgrade
6025 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
6026     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
6027 update-alternatives --config runsystem
6028 </pre></blockquote></p>
6029
6030 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
6031 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
6032 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
6033 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
6034 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
6035 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
6036 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
6037 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
6038 ssh instead.
6039
6040 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
6041 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
6042 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
6043 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
6044 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
6045 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
6046
6047 <p><blockquote><pre>
6048 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
6049 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
6050 EOF
6051 </pre></blockquote></p>
6052
6053 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
6054 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
6055 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
6056 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
6057
6058 <p><blockquote><pre>
6059 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
6060 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
6061 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
6062 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
6063 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
6064 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
6065 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
6066 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
6067 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
6068 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
6069 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
6070 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
6071 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
6072 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
6073 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
6074 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
6075 #
6076 </pre></blockquote></p>
6077
6078 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
6079 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
6080 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
6081 command line stuff.<p>
6082
6083       </div>
6084       <div class="tags">
6085
6086
6087         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>.
6088
6089
6090       </div>
6091     </div>
6092     <div class="padding"></div>
6093
6094     <div class="entry">
6095       <div class="title">
6096         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
6097       </div>
6098       <div class="date">
6099         29th January 2014
6100       </div>
6101       <div class="body">
6102         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
6103 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
6104 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
6105 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
6106 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
6107 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
6108 investigated in
6109 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
6110 from December 2013, in the article
6111 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
6112 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
6113 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
6114 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
6115 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
6116 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
6117 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
6118 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
6119
6120 <p><blockquote>
6121 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
6122 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
6123 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
6124 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
6125 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
6126 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
6127 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
6128 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
6129 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
6130 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
6131 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
6132 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
6133
6134 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
6135 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
6136 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
6137 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
6138 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
6139 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
6140 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
6141 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
6142 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
6143 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
6144 </blockquote><p>
6145
6146 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
6147 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
6148 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
6149 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
6150 summarized like this:</p>
6151
6152 <p><blockquote>
6153 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
6154 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
6155 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
6156 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
6157 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
6158 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
6159 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
6160 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
6161 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
6162 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
6163 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
6164 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
6165 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
6166 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
6167 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
6168 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
6169 </blockquote></p>
6170
6171 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
6172 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
6173 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
6174 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
6175
6176 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6177 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6178 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6179
6180       </div>
6181       <div class="tags">
6182
6183
6184         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
6185
6186
6187       </div>
6188     </div>
6189     <div class="padding"></div>
6190
6191     <div class="entry">
6192       <div class="title">
6193         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
6194       </div>
6195       <div class="date">
6196         14th January 2014
6197       </div>
6198       <div class="body">
6199         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
6200 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
6201 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
6202 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
6203 the source.  The company behind it provide
6204 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
6205 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
6206 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
6207 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
6208 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
6209 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
6210 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
6211 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
6212 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
6213 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
6214 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
6215 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
6216 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
6217 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
6218 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
6219 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
6220 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
6221 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
6222 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
6223
6224 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
6225
6226 <ul>
6227
6228   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
6229   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
6230   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
6231
6232 </ul>
6233
6234 <p>You can
6235 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
6236 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
6237 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
6238 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
6239 include a test suite check.</p>
6240
6241       </div>
6242       <div class="tags">
6243
6244
6245         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>.
6246
6247
6248       </div>
6249     </div>
6250     <div class="padding"></div>
6251
6252     <div class="entry">
6253       <div class="title">
6254         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
6255       </div>
6256       <div class="date">
6257         25th December 2013
6258       </div>
6259       <div class="body">
6260         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6261 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
6262 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
6263 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
6264 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
6265 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
6266 George</a>.</p>
6267
6268 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
6269
6270 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6271
6272 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
6273 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
6274 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
6275 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
6276 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
6277 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
6278
6279 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
6280 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
6281 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
6282 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
6283 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
6284 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
6285 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
6286 to help building another school's informational education concept from
6287 scratch.</p>
6288
6289 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
6290 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
6291 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
6292
6293 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
6294 and cycling.</p>
6295
6296 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6297 project?</strong></p>
6298
6299 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
6300 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
6301 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
6302 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
6303 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
6304 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
6305
6306 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
6307 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
6308 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
6309 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
6310 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
6311 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
6312 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
6313 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
6314 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
6315
6316 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
6317 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
6318 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
6319 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
6320
6321 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6322 Edu?</strong></p>
6323
6324 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
6325 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
6326 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
6327 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
6328 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
6329 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
6330 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
6331 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
6332 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
6333 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
6334 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
6335 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
6336 that it rocks!</p>
6337
6338 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
6339 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
6340 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
6341 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
6342 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
6343 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
6344 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
6345
6346 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6347 Edu?</strong></p>
6348
6349 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
6350 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
6351 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
6352 can list a few points about that:</p>
6353
6354 <ul>
6355
6356  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
6357  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
6358  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
6359
6360 </ul>
6361
6362 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
6363
6364 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6365
6366 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
6367 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
6368 year.</p>
6369
6370 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
6371 run text tools. I use
6372 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
6373 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
6374 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
6375 based full-featured student management software with the two),
6376 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
6377 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
6378 coloured world called the WWW, I use
6379 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
6380 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
6381 e-mail.</p>
6382
6383 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
6384 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
6385 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
6386 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
6387 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
6388 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
6389 Facebook now ;).</p>
6390
6391 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6392 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6393
6394 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
6395 side is what I have experienced.</p>
6396
6397 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
6398 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
6399 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
6400 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
6401 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
6402 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
6403 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
6404 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
6405 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
6406 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
6407 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
6408 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
6409 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
6410 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
6411 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
6412 plain criminal.</p>
6413
6414 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
6415 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
6416 founded an association named
6417 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
6418 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
6419 area of free and open source software, for example the
6420 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
6421 Teckids and are the youth programme of
6422 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
6423 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
6424 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
6425 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
6426 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
6427 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
6428
6429 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
6430 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
6431 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
6432 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
6433 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
6434 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
6435 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
6436 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
6437 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
6438 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
6439 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
6440 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
6441
6442 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
6443 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
6444 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
6445 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
6446
6447 <!--
6448
6449 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
6450
6451 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
6452 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
6453
6454  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
6455    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
6456    of the decision makers above;
6457  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
6458    knowledge about free software
6459
6460 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
6461
6462 -->
6463
6464       </div>
6465       <div class="tags">
6466
6467
6468         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
6469
6470
6471       </div>
6472     </div>
6473     <div class="padding"></div>
6474
6475     <div class="entry">
6476       <div class="title">
6477         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
6478       </div>
6479       <div class="date">
6480          6th December 2013
6481       </div>
6482       <div class="body">
6483         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
6484 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6485 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
6486 had a new school administrator show up on
6487 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
6488 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
6489 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
6490 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
6491 Germany a few years ago.</p>
6492
6493 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6494
6495 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
6496 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
6497 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
6498 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
6499
6500 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
6501 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
6502 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
6503 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
6504 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
6505 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
6506 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
6507 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
6508 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
6509
6510 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6511 project?</strong></p>
6512
6513 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
6514 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
6515 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
6516 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
6517
6518 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6519 Edu?</strong></p>
6520
6521 <ul>
6522   <li>Quick installation,</li>
6523   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
6524   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
6525   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
6526     single company,</li>
6527   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
6528     experience and problem solutions.</li>
6529 </ul>
6530
6531 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6532 Edu?</strong></p>
6533
6534 <ul>
6535   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
6536   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
6537   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
6538   working again reliably.
6539
6540   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
6541   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
6542   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
6543   as their base.
6544
6545   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
6546   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
6547   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
6548   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
6549   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
6550   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
6551
6552   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
6553   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
6554   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
6555   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
6556   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
6557   schemes.</li>
6558
6559   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
6560   compared to Debian.</li>
6561
6562 </ul>
6563
6564 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
6565 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
6566 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
6567 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
6568
6569 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6570
6571 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
6572 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
6573 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
6574 programming languages for teaching.</p>
6575
6576 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6577 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6578
6579 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
6580
6581 <ul>
6582
6583   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
6584     teaching and learning.</li>
6585
6586   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
6587     home, and at their working place without running into license or
6588     conversion problems.</li>
6589
6590   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
6591     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
6592     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
6593     science, not products.</li>
6594
6595   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
6596     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
6597
6598 </ul>
6599
6600       </div>
6601       <div class="tags">
6602
6603
6604         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
6605
6606
6607       </div>
6608     </div>
6609     <div class="padding"></div>
6610
6611     <div class="entry">
6612       <div class="title">
6613         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
6614       </div>
6615       <div class="date">
6616         30th November 2013
6617       </div>
6618       <div class="body">
6619         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
6620 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
6621 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
6622 experiment with interesting network technology, the
6623 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
6624 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
6625 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
6626 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
6627 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
6628 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
6629 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
6630 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
6631 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
6632 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
6633 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
6634 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
6635 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
6636 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
6637 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
6638 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
6639
6640       </div>
6641       <div class="tags">
6642
6643
6644         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6645
6646
6647       </div>
6648     </div>
6649     <div class="padding"></div>
6650
6651     <div class="entry">
6652       <div class="title">
6653         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
6654       </div>
6655       <div class="date">
6656         24th November 2013
6657       </div>
6658       <div class="body">
6659         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
6660 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
6661 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
6662 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
6663 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
6664 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
6665 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
6666 is working on.  I checked the
6667 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
6668 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
6669 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
6670 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
6671 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
6672 These are the release notes:</p>
6673
6674 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
6675
6676 <ul>
6677
6678   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
6679    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
6680    up.</li>
6681
6682   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
6683
6684   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
6685    Matthias Klose.</li>
6686
6687   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
6688    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
6689
6690   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
6691    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
6692    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
6693
6694 </ul>
6695
6696 <p>You can
6697 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
6698 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
6699 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
6700 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
6701 include a testsuite check.</p>
6702
6703       </div>
6704       <div class="tags">
6705
6706
6707         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>.
6708
6709
6710       </div>
6711     </div>
6712     <div class="padding"></div>
6713
6714     <div class="entry">
6715       <div class="title">
6716         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
6717       </div>
6718       <div class="date">
6719         21st November 2013
6720       </div>
6721       <div class="body">
6722         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
6723 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
6724 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
6725 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
6726 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
6727 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
6728 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
6729 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
6730 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
6731 TED talk
6732 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
6733 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
6734 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
6735
6736 <blockquote>
6737
6738 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
6739 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
6740 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
6741 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
6742 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
6743 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
6744 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
6745 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
6746 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
6747 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
6748 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
6749
6750 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
6751 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
6752 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
6753
6754 </blockquote>
6755
6756 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
6757 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
6758 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
6759 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
6760 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
6761 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
6762 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
6763 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
6764 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
6765
6766       </div>
6767       <div class="tags">
6768
6769
6770         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</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>.
6771
6772
6773       </div>
6774     </div>
6775     <div class="padding"></div>
6776
6777     <div class="entry">
6778       <div class="title">
6779         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
6780       </div>
6781       <div class="date">
6782         13th November 2013
6783       </div>
6784       <div class="body">
6785         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
6786 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
6787 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
6788 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
6789 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
6790 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
6791 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
6792 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
6793 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
6794 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
6795 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
6796 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
6797 right away. :)</p>
6798
6799       </div>
6800       <div class="tags">
6801
6802
6803         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6804
6805
6806       </div>
6807     </div>
6808     <div class="padding"></div>
6809
6810     <div class="entry">
6811       <div class="title">
6812         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
6813       </div>
6814       <div class="date">
6815         10th November 2013
6816       </div>
6817       <div class="body">
6818         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
6819 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
6820 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
6821 MR3040 as a mesh node using
6822 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
6823
6824 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
6825 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
6826 and downloaded
6827 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
6828 recommended firmware image</a>
6829 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
6830 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
6831 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
6832 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
6833 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
6834
6835 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
6836 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
6837 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
6838 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
6839 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
6840 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
6841 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
6842 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
6843 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
6844 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
6845 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
6846 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
6847 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
6848
6849 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
6850 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
6851 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
6852 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
6853 them:</p>
6854
6855 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
6856
6857 <pre>
6858
6859 config interface 'loopback'
6860         option ifname 'lo'
6861         option proto 'static'
6862         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
6863         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
6864
6865 config globals 'globals'
6866         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
6867
6868 config interface 'lan'
6869         option ifname 'eth0'
6870         option type 'bridge'
6871         option proto 'dhcp'
6872         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
6873         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
6874         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
6875         option ip6assign '60'
6876
6877 config interface 'mesh'
6878         option ifname 'adhoc0'
6879         option mtu '1528'
6880         option proto 'batadv'
6881         option mesh 'bat0'
6882 </pre>
6883
6884 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
6885 <pre>
6886
6887 config wifi-device 'radio0'
6888         option type 'mac80211'
6889         option channel '11'
6890         option hwmode '11ng'
6891         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
6892         option htmode 'HT20'
6893         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
6894         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
6895         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
6896         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
6897         option disabled '0'
6898
6899 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
6900         option device 'radio0'
6901         option ifname 'adhoc0'
6902         option network 'mesh'
6903         option encryption 'none'
6904         option mode 'adhoc'
6905         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
6906         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
6907 </pre>
6908 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
6909 <pre>
6910
6911 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
6912         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
6913         option 'aggregated_ogms'
6914         option 'ap_isolation'
6915         option 'bonding'
6916         option 'fragmentation'
6917         option 'gw_bandwidth'
6918         option 'gw_mode'
6919         option 'gw_sel_class'
6920         option 'log_level'
6921         option 'orig_interval'
6922         option 'vis_mode'
6923         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
6924         option 'distributed_arp_table'
6925         option 'network_coding'
6926         option 'hop_penalty'
6927
6928 # yet another batX instance
6929 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
6930 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
6931 </pre>
6932
6933 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
6934 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
6935 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
6936
6937       </div>
6938       <div class="tags">
6939
6940
6941         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6942
6943
6944       </div>
6945     </div>
6946     <div class="padding"></div>
6947
6948     <div class="entry">
6949       <div class="title">
6950         <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>
6951       </div>
6952       <div class="date">
6953          2nd November 2013
6954       </div>
6955       <div class="body">
6956         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
6957 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
6958 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
6959 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
6960 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
6961
6962 <p><pre>
6963 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
6964 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
6965 # Provides:          rsyslog
6966 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
6967 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
6968 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
6969 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
6970 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
6971 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
6972 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
6973 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
6974 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
6975 ### END INIT INFO
6976 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
6977 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
6978 </pre></p>
6979
6980 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
6981 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
6982 info/comments.</p>
6983
6984 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
6985 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
6986
6987 <p><pre>
6988 #!/bin/sh
6989
6990 # Define LSB log_* functions.
6991 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
6992 # and status_of_proc is working.
6993 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
6994
6995 #
6996 # Function that starts the daemon/service
6997
6998 #
6999 do_start()
7000 {
7001         # Return
7002         #   0 if daemon has been started
7003         #   1 if daemon was already running
7004         #   2 if daemon could not be started
7005         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
7006                 || return 1
7007         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
7008                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
7009                 || return 2
7010         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
7011         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
7012         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
7013 }
7014
7015 #
7016 # Function that stops the daemon/service
7017 #
7018 do_stop()
7019 {
7020         # Return
7021         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
7022         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
7023         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
7024         #   other if a failure occurred
7025         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
7026         RETVAL="$?"
7027         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
7028         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
7029         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
7030         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
7031         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
7032         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
7033         # sleep for some time.
7034         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
7035         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
7036         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
7037         rm -f $PIDFILE
7038         return "$RETVAL"
7039 }
7040
7041 #
7042 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
7043 #
7044 do_reload() {
7045         #
7046         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
7047         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
7048         # then implement that here.
7049         #
7050         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
7051         return 0
7052 }
7053
7054 SCRIPTNAME=$1
7055 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
7056 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
7057 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
7058     script="$1"
7059     shift
7060     . $script
7061 else
7062     exit 0
7063 fi
7064
7065 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
7066 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
7067
7068 # Exit if the package is not installed
7069 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
7070
7071 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
7072 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
7073
7074 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
7075 . /lib/init/vars.sh
7076
7077 case "$1" in
7078   start)
7079         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
7080         do_start
7081         case "$?" in
7082                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
7083                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
7084         esac
7085         ;;
7086   stop)
7087         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
7088         do_stop
7089         case "$?" in
7090                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
7091                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
7092         esac
7093         ;;
7094   status)
7095         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
7096         ;;
7097   #reload|force-reload)
7098         #
7099         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
7100         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
7101         #
7102         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
7103         #do_reload
7104         #log_end_msg $?
7105         #;;
7106   restart|force-reload)
7107         #
7108         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
7109         # 'force-reload' alias
7110         #
7111         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
7112         do_stop
7113         case "$?" in
7114           0|1)
7115                 do_start
7116                 case "$?" in
7117                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
7118                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
7119                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
7120                 esac
7121                 ;;
7122           *)
7123                 # Failed to stop
7124                 log_end_msg 1
7125                 ;;
7126         esac
7127         ;;
7128   *)
7129         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
7130         exit 3
7131         ;;
7132 esac
7133
7134 :
7135 </pre></p>
7136
7137 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
7138 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
7139 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
7140 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
7141
7142 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
7143 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
7144 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
7145 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
7146 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
7147
7148       </div>
7149       <div class="tags">
7150
7151
7152         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>.
7153
7154
7155       </div>
7156     </div>
7157     <div class="padding"></div>
7158
7159     <div class="entry">
7160       <div class="title">
7161         <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>
7162       </div>
7163       <div class="date">
7164          1st November 2013
7165       </div>
7166       <div class="body">
7167         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
7168 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
7169 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
7170 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
7171 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
7172 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
7173 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
7174 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
7175 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
7176 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
7177 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
7178 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
7179
7180 <p>The source is now available from
7181 <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>
7182
7183       </div>
7184       <div class="tags">
7185
7186
7187         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>.
7188
7189
7190       </div>
7191     </div>
7192     <div class="padding"></div>
7193
7194     <div class="entry">
7195       <div class="title">
7196         <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>
7197       </div>
7198       <div class="date">
7199         27th October 2013
7200       </div>
7201       <div class="body">
7202         <p>The
7203 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
7204 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
7205 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
7206 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
7207 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
7208 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
7209 of a plan to simplify the build system for
7210 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
7211 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
7212 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
7213 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
7214 Raspberry Pi.</p>
7215
7216 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
7217 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
7218 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
7219 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
7220 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
7221 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
7222 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
7223 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
7224 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
7225 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
7226 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
7227 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
7228 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
7229 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
7230 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
7231 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
7232 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
7233 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
7234 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
7235 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
7236 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
7237 available from
7238 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
7239 upstream project page</a>.</p>
7240
7241 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
7242 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
7243 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
7244 list:</p>
7245
7246 <p><pre>
7247 #!/bin/sh
7248 set -e # Exit on first error
7249 rootdir="$1"
7250 cd "$rootdir"
7251 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
7252 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
7253 EOF
7254 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
7255 # install a kernel somewhere too.
7256 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
7257     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
7258 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
7259 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
7260 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
7261 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
7262 </pre></p>
7263
7264 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
7265 to build the image:</p>
7266
7267 <pre>
7268 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
7269     --variant minbase \
7270     --arch armel \
7271     --distribution jessie \
7272     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
7273     --image test.img \
7274     --size 600M \
7275     --bootsize 64M \
7276     --boottype vfat \
7277     --log-level debug \
7278     --verbose \
7279     --no-kernel \
7280     --no-extlinux \
7281     --root-password raspberry \
7282     --hostname raspberrypi \
7283     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
7284     --customize `pwd`/customize \
7285     --package netbase \
7286     --package git-core \
7287     --package binutils \
7288     --package ca-certificates \
7289     --package wget \
7290     --package kmod
7291 </pre></p>
7292
7293 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
7294 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
7295 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
7296 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
7297 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
7298 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
7299 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
7300
7301 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
7302 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
7303 build dependency list.</p>
7304
7305 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
7306 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
7307 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
7308 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
7309
7310       </div>
7311       <div class="tags">
7312
7313
7314         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>.
7315
7316
7317       </div>
7318     </div>
7319     <div class="padding"></div>
7320
7321     <div class="entry">
7322       <div class="title">
7323         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
7324       </div>
7325       <div class="date">
7326         21st October 2013
7327       </div>
7328       <div class="body">
7329         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
7330 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
7331 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
7332 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
7333 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
7334 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
7335 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
7336 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
7337
7338 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
7339 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
7340 instead, I started playing with a
7341 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
7342 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
7343 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
7344 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
7345 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
7346 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
7347 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
7348 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
7349 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
7350 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
7351 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
7352 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
7353 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
7354 every client on the local network.</p>
7355
7356 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
7357 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
7358 and a script
7359 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
7360 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
7361 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
7362 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
7363 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
7364 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
7365 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
7366 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
7367 support.</p>
7368
7369 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
7370 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
7371
7372 <p><pre>
7373 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
7374     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
7375 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
7376 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
7377 %
7378 </pre></p>
7379
7380 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
7381 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
7382 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
7383 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
7384 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
7385 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
7386
7387 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
7388 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
7389 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
7390
7391 <p><table>
7392
7393 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
7394 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
7395 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
7396 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
7397 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
7398 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
7399
7400 </table></p>
7401
7402 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
7403 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
7404 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
7405 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
7406 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
7407 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
7408 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
7409
7410       </div>
7411       <div class="tags">
7412
7413
7414         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7415
7416
7417       </div>
7418     </div>
7419     <div class="padding"></div>
7420
7421     <div class="entry">
7422       <div class="title">
7423         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
7424       </div>
7425       <div class="date">
7426         19th October 2013
7427       </div>
7428       <div class="body">
7429         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
7430 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
7431 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
7432 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
7433 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
7434 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
7435 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
7436 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
7437
7438       </div>
7439       <div class="tags">
7440
7441
7442         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
7443
7444
7445       </div>
7446     </div>
7447     <div class="padding"></div>
7448
7449     <div class="entry">
7450       <div class="title">
7451         <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>
7452       </div>
7453       <div class="date">
7454         15th October 2013
7455       </div>
7456       <div class="body">
7457         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
7458 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
7459 these. :)</p>
7460
7461 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
7462 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
7463 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
7464 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
7465 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
7466 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
7467 hope you will to. :)</p>
7468
7469 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
7470 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
7471 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
7472 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
7473 donated.  Are you next?</p>
7474
7475 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
7476 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
7477 statement under the heading
7478 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
7479 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
7480 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
7481 too.</p>
7482
7483       </div>
7484       <div class="tags">
7485
7486
7487         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>.
7488
7489
7490       </div>
7491     </div>
7492     <div class="padding"></div>
7493
7494     <div class="entry">
7495       <div class="title">
7496         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
7497       </div>
7498       <div class="date">
7499         11th October 2013
7500       </div>
7501       <div class="body">
7502         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
7503 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
7504 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
7505 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
7506 successful examples like
7507 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
7508 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
7509 (see
7510 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
7511 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
7512 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
7513 can be seen from their
7514 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
7515 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
7516 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
7517 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
7518 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
7519
7520 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
7521 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
7522 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
7523 my recent involvement in
7524 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
7525 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
7526 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
7527 when possible, given that most communication between people are
7528 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
7529 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
7530 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
7531 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
7532 important over the years.</p>
7533
7534 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
7535 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
7536 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
7537 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
7538 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
7539 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
7540 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
7541 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
7542 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
7543 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
7544 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
7545 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
7546 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
7547 speakers about this talk (from
7548 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
7549
7550 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
7551
7552 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
7553 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
7554 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
7555 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
7556 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
7557 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
7558 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
7559 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
7560 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
7561 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
7562 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
7563 that project (from
7564 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
7565
7566 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
7567
7568 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
7569 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
7570 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
7571 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
7572 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
7573 based community mesh networks.</p>
7574
7575 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
7576 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
7577 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
7578 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
7579 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
7580 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
7581 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
7582 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
7583 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
7584
7585 <p><table>
7586 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
7587 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
7588 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
7589 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
7590 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
7591 </table></p>
7592
7593 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
7594 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
7595 VillageTelco about
7596 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
7597 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
7598 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
7599 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
7600 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
7601 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
7602
7603 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
7604 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
7605 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
7606 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
7607
7608 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
7609 us on IRC, either channel
7610 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
7611 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
7612 irc.freenode.net.</p>
7613
7614 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
7615 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
7616 and Innovation called
7617 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
7618 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
7619 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
7620 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
7621 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
7622 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
7623 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
7624 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
7625
7626 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
7627 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
7628 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
7629 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
7630 mesh system.</p>
7631
7632       </div>
7633       <div class="tags">
7634
7635
7636         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
7637
7638
7639       </div>
7640     </div>
7641     <div class="padding"></div>
7642
7643     <div class="entry">
7644       <div class="title">
7645         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
7646       </div>
7647       <div class="date">
7648          8th October 2013
7649       </div>
7650       <div class="body">
7651         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
7652 Salvador had published a
7653 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
7654 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
7655 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
7656 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
7657 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
7658 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
7659 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
7660 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
7661 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
7662 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
7663 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
7664 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
7665 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
7666 computers without hard drives by installing one central
7667 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
7668
7669 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
7670
7671 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
7672
7673 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
7674 me know. :)</p>
7675
7676       </div>
7677       <div class="tags">
7678
7679
7680         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
7681
7682
7683       </div>
7684     </div>
7685     <div class="padding"></div>
7686
7687     <div class="entry">
7688       <div class="title">
7689         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
7690       </div>
7691       <div class="date">
7692         29th September 2013
7693       </div>
7694       <div class="body">
7695         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
7696 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
7697 complete announcement text can be found at
7698 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
7699 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
7700
7701 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
7702 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
7703 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
7704 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
7705
7706       </div>
7707       <div class="tags">
7708
7709
7710         Tags: <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>.
7711
7712
7713       </div>
7714     </div>
7715     <div class="padding"></div>
7716
7717     <div class="entry">
7718       <div class="title">
7719         <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>
7720       </div>
7721       <div class="date">
7722         27th September 2013
7723       </div>
7724       <div class="body">
7725         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
7726 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
7727 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
7728 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
7729
7730 <ul>
7731
7732 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
7733 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
7734
7735 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
7736 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
7737
7738 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
7739 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
7740 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
7741 (Youtube)</li>
7742
7743 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
7744 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
7745
7746 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
7747 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
7748
7749 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
7750 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
7751 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
7752
7753 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
7754 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
7755 (Youtube)</li>
7756
7757 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
7758 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
7759
7760 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
7761 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
7762
7763 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
7764 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
7765 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
7766
7767 </ul>
7768
7769 <p>A larger list is available from
7770 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
7771 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
7772
7773 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
7774 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
7775 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
7776 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
7777 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
7778 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
7779 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
7780 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
7781 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
7782 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
7783 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
7784
7785       </div>
7786       <div class="tags">
7787
7788
7789         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>.
7790
7791
7792       </div>
7793     </div>
7794     <div class="padding"></div>
7795
7796     <div class="entry">
7797       <div class="title">
7798         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
7799       </div>
7800       <div class="date">
7801         16th September 2013
7802       </div>
7803       <div class="body">
7804         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7805 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
7806
7807 <blockquote>
7808 <p>Hi,</p>
7809
7810 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
7811 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7812 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
7813
7814 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
7815 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
7816 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
7817 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
7818
7819 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
7820 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
7821
7822 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
7823 compared to beta1:</p>
7824
7825 <ul>
7826
7827 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
7828 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
7829 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
7830 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
7831 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
7832 main server.</li>
7833 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
7834 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
7835 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
7836 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
7837 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
7838
7839 </ul>
7840
7841 <p>Where to get it:</p>
7842
7843 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7844
7845 <ul>
7846 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
7847 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
7848 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
7849 </ul>
7850
7851 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
7852
7853 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
7854 <ul>
7855 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
7856 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
7857 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
7858 </ul>
7859
7860 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
7861
7862 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
7863 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
7864 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
7865 as the other isos.</p>
7866
7867 <p>How to report bugs</p>
7868
7869 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
7870 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7871
7872
7873 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
7874
7875 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
7876 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
7877 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
7878 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
7879 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
7880 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
7881 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
7882 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
7883 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
7884 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
7885 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
7886 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
7887 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7888
7889 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7890 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7891 Squeeze release.</p>
7892
7893 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
7894
7895 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
7896 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
7897 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
7898 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
7899 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
7900 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
7901 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
7902 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
7903 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
7904 directory.</p>
7905
7906
7907 <p>cheers,
7908 <br>        Holger</p>
7909 </blockquote>
7910
7911       </div>
7912       <div class="tags">
7913
7914
7915         Tags: <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>.
7916
7917
7918       </div>
7919     </div>
7920     <div class="padding"></div>
7921
7922     <div class="entry">
7923       <div class="title">
7924         <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>
7925       </div>
7926       <div class="date">
7927         10th September 2013
7928       </div>
7929       <div class="body">
7930         <p>I was introduced to the
7931 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
7932 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
7933 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
7934 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
7935 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
7936 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
7937 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
7938 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
7939
7940 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
7941 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
7942 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
7943 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
7944 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
7945
7946 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
7947 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
7948 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
7949 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
7950 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
7951 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
7952 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
7953 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
7954 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
7955 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
7956 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
7957 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
7958 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
7959 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
7960 missing in Debian).</p>
7961
7962 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
7963 scripts
7964 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
7965 and a administrative web interface
7966 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
7967 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
7968 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
7969 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
7970 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
7971 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
7972 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
7973 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
7974 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
7975 this is really working yet, see
7976 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
7977 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
7978 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
7979 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
7980 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
7981 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
7982 with lots of half baked features.</p>
7983
7984 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
7985 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
7986 at.</p>
7987
7988 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
7989
7990 <ol>
7991
7992 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
7993 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
7994 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
7995 to the Debian installer:<p>
7996 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
7997
7998 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
7999 install on.</li>
8000
8001 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
8002 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
8003
8004 </ol>
8005
8006 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
8007
8008 <ol>
8009
8010 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
8011 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
8012 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
8013 <pre>
8014 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
8015 </pre></li>
8016 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
8017 <pre>
8018 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
8019    apt-key add -
8020 apt-get update
8021 apt-get install freedombox-setup
8022 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
8023 </pre></li>
8024 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
8025
8026 </ol>
8027
8028 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
8029 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
8030 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
8031 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
8032 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
8033
8034 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
8035 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
8036 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
8037 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
8038
8039 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
8040 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
8041 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
8042 irc.debian.org and the
8043 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
8044 mailing list</a>.</p>
8045
8046 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
8047 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
8048 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
8049 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
8050 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
8051 default password is 'secret'.</p>
8052
8053       </div>
8054       <div class="tags">
8055
8056
8057         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>.
8058
8059
8060       </div>
8061     </div>
8062     <div class="padding"></div>
8063
8064     <div class="entry">
8065       <div class="title">
8066         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8067       </div>
8068       <div class="date">
8069         22nd August 2013
8070       </div>
8071       <div class="body">
8072         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
8073 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
8074 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
8075
8076 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
8077
8078 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8079 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8080
8081 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8082
8083 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8084 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8085 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8086 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
8087 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8088 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8089 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8090 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
8091 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
8092 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
8093 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
8094 desktop contains
8095 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
8096 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
8097 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
8098 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
8099
8100 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
8101 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
8102 release.</p>
8103
8104 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
8105 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
8106 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
8107 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
8108 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
8109 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
8110 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
8111 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
8112 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
8113 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
8114 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
8115
8116 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8117
8118 <ul>
8119
8120 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
8121     work also without a attached tty.</li>
8122 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
8123     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
8124     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
8125     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
8126     required).</li>
8127
8128 </ul>
8129
8130 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8131
8132 <ul>
8133
8134 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
8135 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
8136 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
8137 stick ISO image.</li>
8138 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
8139 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
8140 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
8141     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
8142     cope with this.</li>
8143 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
8144 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
8145     empty password hashes.</li>
8146 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
8147     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
8148     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
8149
8150 </ul>
8151
8152 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
8153
8154 <ul>
8155
8156 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
8157     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
8158 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
8159     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
8160
8161 </ul>
8162
8163 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8164
8165 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
8166
8167 <ul>
8168
8169 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
8170
8171 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
8172
8173 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
8174
8175 </ul>
8176
8177 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
8178 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
8179
8180 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
8181
8182 <ul>
8183
8184 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
8185 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
8186 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
8187
8188 </ul>
8189
8190 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
8191 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
8192
8193
8194 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8195
8196 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
8197
8198       </div>
8199       <div class="tags">
8200
8201
8202         Tags: <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>.
8203
8204
8205       </div>
8206     </div>
8207     <div class="padding"></div>
8208
8209     <div class="entry">
8210       <div class="title">
8211         <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>
8212       </div>
8213       <div class="date">
8214         18th August 2013
8215       </div>
8216       <div class="body">
8217         <p>Earlier, I reported about
8218 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
8219 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
8220 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
8221 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
8222 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
8223 currently on the disk.</p>
8224
8225 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
8226 <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>
8227 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
8228 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
8229 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
8230 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
8231 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
8232 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
8233 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
8234 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
8235 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
8236 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
8237 the broken disks.</p>
8238
8239       </div>
8240       <div class="tags">
8241
8242
8243         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>.
8244
8245
8246       </div>
8247     </div>
8248     <div class="padding"></div>
8249
8250     <div class="entry">
8251       <div class="title">
8252         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
8253       </div>
8254       <div class="date">
8255          2nd August 2013
8256       </div>
8257       <div class="body">
8258         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
8259 have worked on a Norwegian
8260 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
8261 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
8262 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
8263 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
8264 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
8265 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
8266 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
8267 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
8268 progress of the translation:</p>
8269
8270 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
8271
8272 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
8273 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
8274 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
8275 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
8276 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
8277 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
8278 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
8279 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
8280 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
8281 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
8282 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
8283
8284 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
8285 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
8286 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
8287 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
8288 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
8289 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
8290 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
8291 project files currently available from
8292 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
8293
8294 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
8295 the updated
8296 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
8297 and
8298 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
8299 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
8300 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
8301 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
8302
8303       </div>
8304       <div class="tags">
8305
8306
8307         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
8308
8309
8310       </div>
8311     </div>
8312     <div class="padding"></div>
8313
8314     <div class="entry">
8315       <div class="title">
8316         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8317       </div>
8318       <div class="date">
8319         27th July 2013
8320       </div>
8321       <div class="body">
8322         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
8323 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8324
8325 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
8326 2013-07-27</strong></p>
8327
8328 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8329 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8330
8331 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8332
8333 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8334 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8335 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8336 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
8337 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8338 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8339 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8340 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
8341 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
8342 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
8343 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
8344 desktop contains
8345 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
8346 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
8347 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
8348 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
8349
8350 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
8351 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
8352 Squeeze release.</p>
8353
8354 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
8355 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
8356 release.</p>
8357
8358 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8359
8360 <ul>
8361
8362 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
8363    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
8364 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
8365    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
8366    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
8367    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
8368    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
8369 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
8370 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
8371 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
8372    crash bugs.</li>
8373
8374 </ul>
8375
8376 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8377
8378 <ul>
8379
8380 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
8381    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
8382 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
8383    netinst CD.</li>
8384 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
8385    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
8386 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
8387    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
8388    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
8389 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
8390    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
8391    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
8392 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
8393    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
8394    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
8395 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
8396    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
8397 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
8398
8399 </ul>
8400
8401 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
8402
8403 <ul>
8404
8405 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
8406 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
8407     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
8408 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
8409
8410 </ul>
8411
8412 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8413
8414 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
8415
8416 <ul>
8417
8418 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
8419
8420 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
8421
8422 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
8423
8424 </ul>
8425
8426 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
8427 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
8428
8429 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
8430
8431 <ul>
8432
8433 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
8434 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
8435 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
8436
8437 </ul>
8438
8439 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
8440 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
8441
8442
8443 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8444
8445 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
8446
8447       </div>
8448       <div class="tags">
8449
8450
8451         Tags: <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>.
8452
8453
8454       </div>
8455     </div>
8456     <div class="padding"></div>
8457
8458     <div class="entry">
8459       <div class="title">
8460         <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>
8461       </div>
8462       <div class="date">
8463         17th July 2013
8464       </div>
8465       <div class="body">
8466         <p>Today I switched to
8467 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
8468 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
8469 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
8470 <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
8471 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
8472 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
8473 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
8474 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
8475 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
8476 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
8477 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
8478 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
8479 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
8480 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
8481 station from now on.</p>
8482
8483 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
8484 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
8485 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
8486 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
8487 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
8488 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
8489 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
8490 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
8491 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
8492 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
8493 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
8494 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
8495
8496 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
8497 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
8498 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
8499 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
8500 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
8501 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
8502 parameters are tuned:</p>
8503
8504 <ul>
8505
8506 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
8507     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
8508
8509 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
8510     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
8511     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
8512
8513 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
8514     systems.</li>
8515
8516 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
8517     /etc/fstab.</li>
8518
8519 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
8520
8521 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
8522     cron.daily).</li>
8523
8524 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
8525     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
8526
8527 </ul>
8528
8529 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
8530 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
8531 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
8532 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
8533 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
8534 from getting the data on the disk (see
8535 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
8536 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
8537 right thing to do.</p>
8538
8539 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
8540 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
8541 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
8542
8543 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
8544 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
8545 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
8546 instead of during my work.</p>
8547
8548 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
8549 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
8550
8551 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
8552 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
8553 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
8554
8555 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
8556 there.</p>
8557
8558 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
8559 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
8560 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
8561 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
8562 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
8563 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
8564 back.</p>
8565
8566       </div>
8567       <div class="tags">
8568
8569
8570         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>.
8571
8572
8573       </div>
8574     </div>
8575     <div class="padding"></div>
8576
8577     <div class="entry">
8578       <div class="title">
8579         <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>
8580       </div>
8581       <div class="date">
8582         10th July 2013
8583       </div>
8584       <div class="body">
8585         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
8586 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
8587 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
8588 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
8589 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
8590 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
8591 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
8592 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
8593
8594 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
8595 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
8596 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
8597 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
8598 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
8599 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
8600 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
8601 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
8602 lock up when I download a new
8603 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
8604 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
8605 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
8606
8607 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
8608 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
8609 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
8610 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
8611 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
8612 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
8613
8614 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
8615 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
8616 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
8617 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
8618 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
8619 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
8620
8621 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
8622 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
8623 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
8624 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
8625 exist).</p>
8626
8627       </div>
8628       <div class="tags">
8629
8630
8631         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>.
8632
8633
8634       </div>
8635     </div>
8636     <div class="padding"></div>
8637
8638     <div class="entry">
8639       <div class="title">
8640         <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>
8641       </div>
8642       <div class="date">
8643          9th July 2013
8644       </div>
8645       <div class="body">
8646         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
8647 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
8648 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
8649 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
8650 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8651 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
8652 Bitraf</a>.</p>
8653
8654 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
8655 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
8656 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
8657 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
8658 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
8659
8660       </div>
8661       <div class="tags">
8662
8663
8664         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>.
8665
8666
8667       </div>
8668     </div>
8669     <div class="padding"></div>
8670
8671     <div class="entry">
8672       <div class="title">
8673         <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>
8674       </div>
8675       <div class="date">
8676          5th July 2013
8677       </div>
8678       <div class="body">
8679         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
8680 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
8681 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
8682 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
8683 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
8684 ended up picking a
8685 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
8686 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
8687 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
8688 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
8689 on that below.</p>
8690
8691 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
8692 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
8693 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
8694 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
8695 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
8696 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
8697 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
8698 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
8699 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
8700
8701 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
8702 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
8703 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
8704 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
8705 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
8706 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
8707 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
8708
8709 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
8710 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
8711
8712 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
8713 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
8714 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
8715 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
8716 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
8717 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
8718 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
8719 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
8720 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
8721 kernel developers as
8722 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
8723 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
8724 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
8725 Lenovo forums, both for
8726 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
8727 2012-11-10</a> and for
8728 <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
8729 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
8730 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
8731 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
8732 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
8733 There is even a
8734 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
8735 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
8736 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
8737
8738 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
8739 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
8740 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
8741 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
8742 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
8743 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
8744 fixed. :)</p>
8745
8746       </div>
8747       <div class="tags">
8748
8749
8750         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>.
8751
8752
8753       </div>
8754     </div>
8755     <div class="padding"></div>
8756
8757     <div class="entry">
8758       <div class="title">
8759         <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>
8760       </div>
8761       <div class="date">
8762          4th July 2013
8763       </div>
8764       <div class="body">
8765         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
8766 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
8767 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
8768 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
8769 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
8770 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
8771 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
8772 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
8773 with an expencive door stop.</p>
8774
8775 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
8776 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
8777 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
8778 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
8779 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
8780 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
8781 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
8782
8783 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
8784 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
8785 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
8786 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
8787 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
8788 new laptop now. :)</p>
8789
8790 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
8791
8792       </div>
8793       <div class="tags">
8794
8795
8796         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>.
8797
8798
8799       </div>
8800     </div>
8801     <div class="padding"></div>
8802
8803     <div class="entry">
8804       <div class="title">
8805         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8806       </div>
8807       <div class="date">
8808          3rd July 2013
8809       </div>
8810       <div class="body">
8811         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
8812 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8813
8814 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
8815 2013-07-03</strong></p>
8816
8817 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8818 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8819
8820 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8821
8822 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8823 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8824 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8825 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
8826 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8827 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8828 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8829 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
8830 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
8831 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
8832 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
8833 desktop contains
8834 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
8835 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
8836 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
8837 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
8838
8839 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
8840 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
8841 Squeeze release.</p>
8842
8843 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8844 <ul>
8845   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
8846   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
8847     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
8848     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
8849   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
8850     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
8851     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
8852   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
8853     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
8854     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
8855     too.</li>
8856   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
8857     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
8858 </ul>
8859 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8860 <ul>
8861   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
8862   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
8863   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
8864     up for some language options.</li>
8865   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
8866   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
8867   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
8868     d-i is doing it.</li>
8869   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
8870     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
8871   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
8872     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
8873     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
8874   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
8875     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
8876   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
8877   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
8878     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
8879   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
8880     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
8881 </ul>
8882 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
8883 <ul>
8884   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
8885     available yet (698840).</li>
8886   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
8887 </ul>
8888 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8889
8890 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
8891 <ul>
8892   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
8893   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
8894   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
8895 </ul>
8896
8897 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
8898 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
8899
8900 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
8901 <ul>
8902   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
8903   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
8904   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
8905 </ul>
8906
8907 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
8908 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
8909
8910 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8911
8912 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
8913
8914       </div>
8915       <div class="tags">
8916
8917
8918         Tags: <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>.
8919
8920
8921       </div>
8922     </div>
8923     <div class="padding"></div>
8924
8925     <div class="entry">
8926       <div class="title">
8927         <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>
8928       </div>
8929       <div class="date">
8930         25th June 2013
8931       </div>
8932       <div class="body">
8933         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
8934 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
8935 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
8936 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
8937 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
8938 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
8939 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
8940 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
8941 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
8942 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
8943 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
8944
8945 <p><pre>
8946 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
8947 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
8948 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
8949 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
8950 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
8951 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
8952 firmware-ipw2x00
8953 firmware-ipw2x00
8954 Preconfiguring packages ...
8955 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
8956 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
8957 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
8958 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
8959 #
8960 </pre></p>
8961
8962 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
8963 printed instead:</p>
8964
8965 <p><pre>
8966 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
8967 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
8968 #
8969 </pre></p>
8970
8971 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
8972 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
8973
8974 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
8975 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
8976 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
8977 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
8978 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
8979 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
8980 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
8981 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
8982 machine.</p>
8983
8984 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
8985 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
8986 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
8987 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
8988 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
8989 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
8990
8991       </div>
8992       <div class="tags">
8993
8994
8995         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>.
8996
8997
8998       </div>
8999     </div>
9000     <div class="padding"></div>
9001
9002     <div class="entry">
9003       <div class="title">
9004         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
9005       </div>
9006       <div class="date">
9007         22nd June 2013
9008       </div>
9009       <div class="body">
9010         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9011 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
9012 which check that services are running, working, and return the
9013 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
9014 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
9015 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
9016 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
9017 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
9018 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
9019
9020 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
9021 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
9022 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
9023 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
9024 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
9025 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
9026 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
9027 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
9028 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
9029 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
9030 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
9031 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
9032 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
9033 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
9034
9035 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
9036 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
9037 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
9038 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
9039 the problem.</p>
9040
9041 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
9042 please join us on
9043 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
9044 irc.debian.org</a> and the
9045 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
9046 list.</p>
9047
9048       </div>
9049       <div class="tags">
9050
9051
9052         Tags: <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>.
9053
9054
9055       </div>
9056     </div>
9057     <div class="padding"></div>
9058
9059     <div class="entry">
9060       <div class="title">
9061         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
9062       </div>
9063       <div class="date">
9064         17th June 2013
9065       </div>
9066       <div class="body">
9067         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
9068 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
9069 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
9070 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
9071 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
9072 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
9073 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
9074 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
9075
9076 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9077
9078 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
9079 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
9080 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
9081 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
9082 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
9083 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
9084 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
9085 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
9086 field.</p>
9087
9088 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
9089 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
9090 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
9091 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
9092 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
9093 the only one we have in our country.</p>
9094
9095 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
9096 project?</strong></p>
9097
9098 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
9099 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
9100 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
9101 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
9102 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
9103 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
9104 ways to contribute.</p>
9105
9106 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
9107 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
9108 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
9109 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
9110 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
9111 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
9112 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
9113 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
9114 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
9115 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
9116
9117 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9118 Edu?</strong></p>
9119
9120 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
9121 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
9122 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
9123 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
9124 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
9125 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
9126 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
9127 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
9128
9129 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
9130 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
9131 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
9132 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
9133 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
9134 project.</p>
9135
9136 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9137 Edu?</strong></p>
9138
9139 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
9140 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
9141 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
9142 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
9143 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
9144 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
9145 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
9146 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
9147 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
9148
9149 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
9150 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
9151 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
9152 on.</p>
9153
9154 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9155
9156 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
9157 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
9158 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
9159 Enlightenment project a lot!),
9160 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
9161 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
9162 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
9163 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
9164 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
9165
9166 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9167 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9168
9169 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
9170 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
9171 that:</p>
9172
9173 <ul>
9174
9175 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
9176
9177 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
9178     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
9179     of teenagers more?</li>
9180
9181 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
9182     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
9183     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
9184     them!)</li>
9185
9186 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
9187     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
9188     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
9189
9190 </ul>
9191
9192 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
9193 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
9194 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
9195 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
9196 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
9197
9198       </div>
9199       <div class="tags">
9200
9201
9202         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
9203
9204
9205       </div>
9206     </div>
9207     <div class="padding"></div>
9208
9209     <div class="entry">
9210       <div class="title">
9211         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
9212       </div>
9213       <div class="date">
9214         12th June 2013
9215       </div>
9216       <div class="body">
9217         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
9218 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
9219 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
9220 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
9221 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
9222 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
9223
9224 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9225
9226 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
9227 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
9228 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
9229
9230 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
9231 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
9232 each other.</p>
9233
9234 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
9235 project?</strong></p>
9236
9237 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
9238 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
9239 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
9240 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
9241 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
9242 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
9243 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
9244 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
9245 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
9246 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
9247 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
9248 we'll get there one day.</p>
9249
9250 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9251 Edu?</strong></p>
9252
9253 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
9254 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
9255 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
9256 very high quality work.</p>
9257
9258 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
9259 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
9260 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
9261 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
9262 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
9263
9264 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9265 Edu?</strong></p>
9266
9267 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
9268 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
9269 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
9270
9271 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
9272 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
9273 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
9274 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
9275 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
9276 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
9277 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
9278 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
9279 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
9280 currently.</p>
9281
9282 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
9283 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
9284 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
9285 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
9286 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
9287 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
9288 autonomous.</p>
9289
9290 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9291
9292 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
9293 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
9294 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
9295 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
9296 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
9297
9298 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
9299 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
9300 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
9301 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
9302 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
9303 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
9304 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
9305 X.</p>
9306
9307 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
9308 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
9309 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
9310 it :p)
9311
9312 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9313 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9314
9315 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
9316 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
9317 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
9318 that.</p>
9319
9320 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
9321 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
9322 advantage of that.</p>
9323
9324 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
9325 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
9326 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
9327 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
9328 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
9329 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
9330 best solution for them.</p>
9331
9332 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
9333 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
9334 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
9335
9336       </div>
9337       <div class="tags">
9338
9339
9340         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
9341
9342
9343       </div>
9344     </div>
9345     <div class="padding"></div>
9346
9347     <div class="entry">
9348       <div class="title">
9349         <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>
9350       </div>
9351       <div class="date">
9352         11th June 2013
9353       </div>
9354       <div class="body">
9355         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
9356 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
9357 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
9358 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
9359 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
9360 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
9361 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
9362 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
9363 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
9364 i915 driver used by the
9365 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
9366 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
9367
9368 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
9369 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
9370 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
9371 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
9372 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
9373
9374 <pre>
9375 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
9376 update-initramfs -u -k all
9377 </pre>
9378
9379 <p>Since March 2012 there is
9380 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
9381 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
9382 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
9383 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
9384 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
9385 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
9386 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
9387 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
9388 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
9389 number.</p>
9390
9391 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
9392 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
9393
9394 <p><pre>
9395 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
9396     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
9397     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
9398  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
9399  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
9400     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
9401  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
9402     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
9403  Latency: 0
9404  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
9405  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
9406  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
9407  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
9408  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
9409  Capabilities: <access denied>
9410  Kernel driver in use: i915
9411 </pre></p>
9412
9413 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
9414
9415 <p><pre>
9416 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
9417        ...
9418         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
9419         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
9420        ...
9421 }
9422 </pre></p>
9423
9424 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
9425 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
9426 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
9427 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
9428 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
9429 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
9430 yet shown up in
9431 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
9432 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
9433 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
9434 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
9435 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
9436 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
9437
9438 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
9439 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
9440 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
9441 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
9442 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
9443 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
9444 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
9445 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
9446 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
9447 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
9448 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
9449 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
9450
9451 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
9452 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
9453 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
9454 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
9455 backlight.</p>
9456
9457       </div>
9458       <div class="tags">
9459
9460
9461         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>.
9462
9463
9464       </div>
9465     </div>
9466     <div class="padding"></div>
9467
9468     <div class="entry">
9469       <div class="title">
9470         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
9471       </div>
9472       <div class="date">
9473         10th June 2013
9474       </div>
9475       <div class="body">
9476         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
9477 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
9478
9479 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
9480 2013-06-10</strong></p>
9481
9482 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
9483 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
9484
9485 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
9486
9487 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
9488 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
9489 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
9490 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
9491 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
9492 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
9493 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
9494 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
9495 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
9496 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
9497 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
9498 desktop contains
9499 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
9500 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
9501 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
9502 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
9503
9504 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
9505 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
9506 Squeeze release.</p>
9507
9508 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
9509
9510 <ul>
9511
9512 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
9513 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
9514 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
9515 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
9516 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
9517
9518 </ul>
9519
9520 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
9521
9522 <ul>
9523
9524 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
9525 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
9526 <li>New Romanian translation.
9527 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
9528 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
9529 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
9530 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
9531 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
9532 <li>More testsuite tests.
9533 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
9534 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
9535
9536 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
9537 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
9538
9539 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
9540 them up with GOsa².</li>
9541
9542 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
9543
9544 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
9545 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
9546 entered password). </li>
9547
9548 </ul>
9549
9550 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
9551
9552 <ul>
9553
9554 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
9555
9556 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
9557 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
9558 missing import feature).</li>
9559
9560 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
9561
9562 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
9563 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
9564 unfixed.</li>
9565
9566 </ul>
9567
9568 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
9569
9570 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
9571
9572 <ul>
9573
9574 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
9575
9576 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
9577
9578 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
9579
9580 </ul>
9581
9582 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
9583 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
9584
9585 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
9586
9587 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
9588
9589       </div>
9590       <div class="tags">
9591
9592
9593         Tags: <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>.
9594
9595
9596       </div>
9597     </div>
9598     <div class="padding"></div>
9599
9600     <div class="entry">
9601       <div class="title">
9602         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
9603       </div>
9604       <div class="date">
9605          5th June 2013
9606       </div>
9607       <div class="body">
9608         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
9609 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
9610 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
9611 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
9612 the project:
9613
9614 <ol>
9615
9616 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
9617   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
9618   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
9619   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
9620   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
9621
9622 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
9623   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
9624   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
9625   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
9626   #698840</a>.</li>
9627
9628 </ol>
9629
9630 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
9631 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
9632 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
9633
9634       </div>
9635       <div class="tags">
9636
9637
9638         Tags: <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>.
9639
9640
9641       </div>
9642     </div>
9643     <div class="padding"></div>
9644
9645     <div class="entry">
9646       <div class="title">
9647         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
9648       </div>
9649       <div class="date">
9650          4th June 2013
9651       </div>
9652       <div class="body">
9653         <p>It has been a while since my last English
9654 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
9655 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
9656 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
9657 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
9658 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
9659
9660 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9661
9662 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
9663 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
9664 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
9665 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
9666
9667 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
9668 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
9669 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
9670
9671 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
9672 project?</strong></p>
9673
9674 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
9675 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
9676 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
9677 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
9678 manual.
9679
9680 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
9681 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
9682 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
9683 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
9684
9685 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
9686 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
9687 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
9688 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
9689 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
9690 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
9691 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
9692 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
9693 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
9694 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
9695
9696 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
9697 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
9698 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
9699 beautiful project.</p>
9700
9701 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9702 Edu?</strong></p>
9703
9704 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
9705 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
9706 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
9707
9708 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
9709 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
9710 of educational free software.</p>
9711
9712 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9713 Edu?</strong></p>
9714
9715 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
9716 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
9717 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
9718 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
9719 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
9720
9721 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
9722 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
9723 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
9724 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
9725 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
9726 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
9727 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
9728 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
9729
9730 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9731
9732 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
9733 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
9734 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
9735 also using the mathematical software
9736 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
9737 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
9738 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
9739
9740 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
9741 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
9742 statistics?</strong></p>
9743
9744 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
9745 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
9746 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
9747 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
9748
9749 <ul>
9750
9751 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
9752 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
9753 constructions in planar geometry
9754
9755 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
9756 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
9757 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
9758
9759 </ul>
9760
9761 <p>I like also
9762 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
9763 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
9764 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
9765
9766 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9767 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9768
9769 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
9770
9771 <ul>
9772
9773 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
9774
9775 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
9776     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
9777     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
9778
9779 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
9780
9781 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
9782     system.</li>
9783
9784 </ul>
9785
9786       </div>
9787       <div class="tags">
9788
9789
9790         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
9791
9792
9793       </div>
9794     </div>
9795     <div class="padding"></div>
9796
9797     <div class="entry">
9798       <div class="title">
9799         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
9800       </div>
9801       <div class="date">
9802          1st June 2013
9803       </div>
9804       <div class="body">
9805         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9806 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
9807 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
9808 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
9809 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
9810 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
9811 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
9812 program.</p>
9813
9814 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
9815
9816 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
9817 <p>
9818 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
9819 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
9820 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
9821 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
9822 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
9823 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
9824 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
9825 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
9826 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
9827 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
9828 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
9829 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
9830 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
9831 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
9832 </p>
9833
9834 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
9835 <p>
9836 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
9837 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
9838 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
9839 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
9840 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
9841 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
9842 </p>
9843
9844 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
9845 <p>
9846 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
9847 </p>
9848
9849 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
9850 <p>
9851 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
9852 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
9853 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
9854 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
9855 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
9856 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
9857 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
9858 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
9859 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
9860 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
9861 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
9862 </p>
9863
9864 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
9865 <p>
9866 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
9867 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
9868 </p>
9869
9870 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
9871 <p>
9872 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
9873 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
9874 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
9875 </p>
9876
9877 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
9878 <p>
9879 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
9880 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
9881 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
9882 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
9883 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
9884 </p>
9885
9886 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
9887 <p>
9888 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
9889 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
9890 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
9891 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
9892 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
9893 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
9894 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
9895 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
9896 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
9897 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
9898 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
9899 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
9900 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
9901 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
9902 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
9903 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
9904 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
9905 </p>
9906
9907 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
9908 <p>
9909 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
9910 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
9911 </p>
9912
9913 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
9914 <p>
9915 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
9916 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
9917 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
9918 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
9919 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
9920 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
9921 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
9922 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
9923 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
9924 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
9925 </p>
9926
9927 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
9928 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
9929 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
9930 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
9931 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
9932 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
9933 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
9934
9935       </div>
9936       <div class="tags">
9937
9938
9939         Tags: <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>.
9940
9941
9942       </div>
9943     </div>
9944     <div class="padding"></div>
9945
9946     <div class="entry">
9947       <div class="title">
9948         <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>
9949       </div>
9950       <div class="date">
9951         27th May 2013
9952       </div>
9953       <div class="body">
9954         <p>Two days ago, I asked
9955 <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
9956 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
9957 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
9958 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
9959 and Windows 8.</p>
9960
9961 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
9962 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
9963 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
9964 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
9965 enough to tell.</p>
9966
9967 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
9968 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
9969 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
9970 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
9971 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
9972 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
9973 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
9974 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
9975 to follow.</p>
9976
9977 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
9978 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
9979 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
9980 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
9981 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
9982 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
9983 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
9984 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
9985
9986 <p>I've updated the
9987 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
9988 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
9989 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
9990 machine.</p>
9991
9992 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
9993 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
9994
9995       </div>
9996       <div class="tags">
9997
9998
9999         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>.
10000
10001
10002       </div>
10003     </div>
10004     <div class="padding"></div>
10005
10006     <div class="entry">
10007       <div class="title">
10008         <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>
10009       </div>
10010       <div class="date">
10011         25th May 2013
10012       </div>
10013       <div class="body">
10014         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
10015 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
10016 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
10017 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
10018 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
10019 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
10020
10021 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
10022 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
10023 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
10024 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
10025 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
10026 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
10027 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
10028 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
10029 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
10030 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
10031
10032 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
10033 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
10034 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
10035 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
10036 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
10037 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
10038
10039 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
10040 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
10041 on new Laptops?</p>
10042
10043       </div>
10044       <div class="tags">
10045
10046
10047         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>.
10048
10049
10050       </div>
10051     </div>
10052     <div class="padding"></div>
10053
10054     <div class="entry">
10055       <div class="title">
10056         <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>
10057       </div>
10058       <div class="date">
10059         17th May 2013
10060       </div>
10061       <div class="body">
10062         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
10063 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
10064 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
10065 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
10066 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
10067 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
10068 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
10069 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
10070 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
10071 donate some money</a>.
10072
10073 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
10074 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
10075 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
10076 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
10077 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
10078
10079 <p>The script,
10080 <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/>
10081 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
10082 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
10083 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
10084
10085 <ol>
10086
10087 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
10088 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
10089 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
10090     our configuration.</li>
10091 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
10092     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
10093     according to the profile specified in the config above,
10094     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
10095 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
10096     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
10097 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
10098
10099 </ol>
10100
10101 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
10102 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
10103 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
10104 the needed packages.</p>
10105
10106 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
10107 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
10108 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
10109 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
10110 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
10111 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
10112
10113 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
10114 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
10115 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
10116
10117 <p><pre>
10118 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
10119 DESKTOP="lxde"
10120 </pre></p>
10121
10122 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
10123 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
10124 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
10125 boot.</p>
10126
10127       </div>
10128       <div class="tags">
10129
10130
10131         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>.
10132
10133
10134       </div>
10135     </div>
10136     <div class="padding"></div>
10137
10138     <div class="entry">
10139       <div class="title">
10140         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
10141       </div>
10142       <div class="date">
10143         14th May 2013
10144       </div>
10145       <div class="body">
10146         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10147 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
10148 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
10149
10150 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
10151 2013-05-14</strong></p>
10152
10153 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
10154 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
10155 codename "Wheezy".</p>
10156
10157 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
10158
10159 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
10160 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
10161 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
10162 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
10163 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
10164 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
10165 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
10166 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
10167
10168 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
10169 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
10170 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
10171
10172 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
10173 <ul>
10174   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
10175     default.</li>
10176   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
10177   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
10178   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
10179     ibus-anthy.</li>
10180 </ul>
10181
10182 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
10183 <ul>
10184
10185   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
10186     reliability improvements.</li>
10187   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
10188     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
10189   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
10190     problems.</li>
10191   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
10192     direct:// URL.</li>
10193   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
10194   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
10195   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
10196   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
10197     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
10198   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
10199     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
10200 </ul>
10201
10202 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
10203 <ul>
10204
10205   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
10206     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
10207     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
10208   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
10209   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
10210     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
10211   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
10212   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
10213   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
10214     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
10215   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
10216     password submission problem
10217     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
10218
10219 </ul>
10220
10221 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
10222
10223 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
10224 <ul>
10225
10226   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
10227   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
10228   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
10229
10230 </ul>
10231
10232 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
10233
10234 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
10235
10236 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
10237
10238 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
10239
10240       </div>
10241       <div class="tags">
10242
10243
10244         Tags: <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>.
10245
10246
10247       </div>
10248     </div>
10249     <div class="padding"></div>
10250
10251     <div class="entry">
10252       <div class="title">
10253         <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>
10254       </div>
10255       <div class="date">
10256         11th May 2013
10257       </div>
10258       <div class="body">
10259         <P>In January,
10260 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
10261 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
10262 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
10263 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
10264 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
10265 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
10266 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
10267 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
10268 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
10269 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
10270 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
10271 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
10272
10273 <p><table>
10274 <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>
10275 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
10276 <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>
10277 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
10278 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
10279 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
10280 <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>
10281 <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>
10282 <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>
10283 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
10284 </table></p>
10285
10286 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
10287 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
10288 available in experimental.</p>
10289
10290 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
10291 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
10292 for LEGO designers.</p>
10293
10294       </div>
10295       <div class="tags">
10296
10297
10298         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>.
10299
10300
10301       </div>
10302     </div>
10303     <div class="padding"></div>
10304
10305     <div class="entry">
10306       <div class="title">
10307         <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>
10308       </div>
10309       <div class="date">
10310          5th May 2013
10311       </div>
10312       <div class="body">
10313         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
10314 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
10315 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
10316 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
10317 soon.</p>
10318
10319 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
10320 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
10321 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
10322 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
10323 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
10324 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
10325 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
10326 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
10327 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
10328 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
10329 Edu.</a>
10330
10331 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
10332 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
10333 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
10334 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
10335 follow.<p>
10336
10337       </div>
10338       <div class="tags">
10339
10340
10341         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>.
10342
10343
10344       </div>
10345     </div>
10346     <div class="padding"></div>
10347
10348     <div class="entry">
10349       <div class="title">
10350         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
10351       </div>
10352       <div class="date">
10353         26th April 2013
10354       </div>
10355       <div class="body">
10356         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
10357 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
10358 announcement:</p>
10359
10360 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
10361 2013-04-26</strong></p>
10362
10363 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
10364 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
10365
10366 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
10367
10368 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
10369 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
10370 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
10371 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
10372 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
10373 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
10374 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
10375 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
10376 installed via the network.</p>
10377
10378 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
10379 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
10380 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
10381
10382 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
10383
10384 <ul>
10385 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
10386   <ul>
10387      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
10388      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
10389          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
10390          manual.)</li>
10391      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
10392      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
10393      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
10394      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
10395      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
10396      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
10397      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
10398      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
10399      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
10400      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
10401      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
10402      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
10403          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
10404          manual</a> for more details.</li>
10405      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
10406          installation.</li>
10407      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
10408          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
10409   </ul></li>
10410 </ul>
10411
10412 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
10413 <ul>
10414 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
10415     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
10416     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
10417 </ul>
10418
10419 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
10420 <ul>
10421 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
10422     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
10423     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
10424 </ul>
10425
10426 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
10427 <ul>
10428 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
10429     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
10430     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
10431 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
10432     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
10433     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
10434 </ul>
10435
10436 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
10437 <ul>
10438 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
10439     yet.</li>
10440 </ul>
10441
10442 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
10443
10444 <ul>
10445 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
10446     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
10447     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
10448 </ul>
10449
10450 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
10451
10452 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
10453 <ul>
10454 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
10455 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
10456 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
10457 </ul>
10458
10459 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
10460
10461 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
10462
10463 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
10464
10465 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
10466
10467       </div>
10468       <div class="tags">
10469
10470
10471         Tags: <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>.
10472
10473
10474       </div>
10475     </div>
10476     <div class="padding"></div>
10477
10478     <div class="entry">
10479       <div class="title">
10480         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
10481       </div>
10482       <div class="date">
10483         16th April 2013
10484       </div>
10485       <div class="body">
10486         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
10487 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
10488 Details about the gathering can be found
10489 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
10490 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
10491 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
10492 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
10493 weekend.</p>
10494
10495 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
10496 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
10497 Edu release.</p>
10498
10499 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
10500
10501       </div>
10502       <div class="tags">
10503
10504
10505         Tags: <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>.
10506
10507
10508       </div>
10509     </div>
10510     <div class="padding"></div>
10511
10512     <div class="entry">
10513       <div class="title">
10514         <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>
10515       </div>
10516       <div class="date">
10517          3rd April 2013
10518       </div>
10519       <div class="body">
10520         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
10521 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
10522 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
10523 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
10524
10525 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
10526 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
10527 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
10528 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
10529 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
10530 BTS. :)</p>
10531
10532       </div>
10533       <div class="tags">
10534
10535
10536         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>.
10537
10538
10539       </div>
10540     </div>
10541     <div class="padding"></div>
10542
10543     <div class="entry">
10544       <div class="title">
10545         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
10546       </div>
10547       <div class="date">
10548         26th March 2013
10549       </div>
10550       <div class="body">
10551         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
10552 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
10553 font you use when printing.</p>
10554
10555 <p>Three years ago,
10556 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
10557 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
10558 changed their default front from
10559 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
10560 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
10561 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
10562 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
10563 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
10564 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
10565 prints.</p>
10566
10567 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
10568 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
10569 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
10570 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
10571 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
10572 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
10573 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
10574 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
10575 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
10576 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
10577 depend on the documents printed.</p>
10578
10579 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
10580 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
10581 and save some money in the process.</p>
10582
10583 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
10584 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
10585 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
10586 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
10587 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
10588 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
10589 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
10590 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
10591 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
10592
10593       </div>
10594       <div class="tags">
10595
10596
10597         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10598
10599
10600       </div>
10601     </div>
10602     <div class="padding"></div>
10603
10604     <div class="entry">
10605       <div class="title">
10606         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
10607       </div>
10608       <div class="date">
10609         24th March 2013
10610       </div>
10611       <div class="body">
10612         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
10613 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
10614 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
10615 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
10616 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
10617 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
10618 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
10619 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
10620 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
10621 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
10622 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
10623 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
10624
10625 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
10626 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
10627 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
10628 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
10629 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
10630 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
10631 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
10632 all I had to do was to use the
10633 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
10634 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
10635 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
10636 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
10637 xsltproc/fop (aka
10638 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
10639 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
10640 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
10641 technical detail.</p>
10642
10643 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
10644 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
10645 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
10646 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
10647 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
10648 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
10649
10650 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
10651 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
10652 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
10653 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
10654 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
10655 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
10656 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
10657 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
10658 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
10659
10660 <p><blockquote><pre>
10661 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
10662 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
10663   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
10664     &lt;hr/&gt;
10665   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
10666 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
10667 </pre></blockquote></p>
10668
10669 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
10670
10671 <p><blockquote><pre>
10672 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
10673 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
10674   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
10675     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
10676       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
10677     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
10678   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
10679 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
10680 </pre></blockquote></p>
10681
10682 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
10683 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
10684 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
10685 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
10686 enough.</p>
10687
10688 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
10689 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
10690 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
10691 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
10692 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
10693 look like this:</p>
10694
10695 <p><blockquote><pre>
10696 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
10697 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
10698   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
10699     &lt;br/&gt;
10700   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
10701 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
10702 </pre></blockquote></p>
10703
10704 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
10705
10706 <p><blockquote><pre>
10707 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
10708 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
10709   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
10710   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
10711     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
10712   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
10713 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
10714 </pre></blockquote></p>
10715
10716 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
10717 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
10718 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
10719 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
10720 page.</p>
10721
10722 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
10723 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
10724 github</a>
10725 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
10726 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
10727 days.</p>
10728
10729       </div>
10730       <div class="tags">
10731
10732
10733         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
10734
10735
10736       </div>
10737     </div>
10738     <div class="padding"></div>
10739
10740     <div class="entry">
10741       <div class="title">
10742         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
10743       </div>
10744       <div class="date">
10745         17th March 2013
10746       </div>
10747       <div class="body">
10748         <p>Via
10749 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
10750 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
10751 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
10752 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
10753 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
10754 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
10755 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
10756
10757 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
10758 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
10759
10760 <blockquote>
10761 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
10762 </blockquote>
10763
10764 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
10765
10766 <blockquote>
10767 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
10768 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
10769 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
10770 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
10771 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
10772 </blockquote>
10773
10774 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
10775 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
10776 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
10777 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
10778
10779 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
10780 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
10781
10782 <blockquote>
10783 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
10784 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
10785 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
10786 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
10787 </blockquote>
10788
10789 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
10790 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
10791 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
10792 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
10793 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
10794
10795 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
10796 embedding:</p>
10797
10798 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
10799
10800       </div>
10801       <div class="tags">
10802
10803
10804         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
10805
10806
10807       </div>
10808     </div>
10809     <div class="padding"></div>
10810
10811     <div class="entry">
10812       <div class="title">
10813         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
10814       </div>
10815       <div class="date">
10816          8th March 2013
10817       </div>
10818       <div class="body">
10819         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
10820 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
10821 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
10822 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
10823 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
10824 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
10825 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
10826
10827 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
10828
10829 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
10830 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
10831
10832 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
10833 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
10834 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
10835 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
10836 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
10837 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
10838
10839 <p>Images are available for download at
10840 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
10841
10842 <p>md5sums:
10843 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
10844 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
10845 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
10846
10847 <p>sha1sums:
10848 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
10849 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
10850 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
10851
10852 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
10853
10854 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
10855 2013-03-03:</p>
10856
10857 <ul>
10858   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
10859   <ul>
10860         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
10861         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
10862   </ul></li>
10863   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
10864   <ul>
10865         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
10866         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
10867   </ul></li>
10868   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
10869      <ul>
10870         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
10871         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
10872         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
10873                 Closes: #664596</li>
10874         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
10875                 Closes: #664976</li>
10876         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
10877            <ul>
10878                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
10879                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
10880            </ul></li>
10881         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
10882            <ul>
10883                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
10884                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
10885                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
10886                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
10887                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
10888            </ul></li>
10889         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
10890     </ul>
10891   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
10892     <ul>
10893         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
10894     </ul></li>
10895 </ul>
10896
10897 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
10898 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
10899 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
10900 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
10901
10902 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
10903 mailinglist
10904 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
10905 </p></blockquote>
10906
10907 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
10908
10909       </div>
10910       <div class="tags">
10911
10912
10913         Tags: <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>.
10914
10915
10916       </div>
10917     </div>
10918     <div class="padding"></div>
10919
10920     <div class="entry">
10921       <div class="title">
10922         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
10923       </div>
10924       <div class="date">
10925          3rd March 2013
10926       </div>
10927       <div class="body">
10928         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
10929 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
10930 support using
10931 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
10932 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
10933 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
10934 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
10935 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
10936 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
10937 using the GNU LGPL, and
10938 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
10939
10940 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
10941 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
10942 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
10943 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
10944 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
10945 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
10946
10947 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
10948 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
10949 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
10950 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
10951 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
10952 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
10953 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
10954 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
10955 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
10956 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
10957 signal distribution is handled using
10958 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
10959 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
10960 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
10961 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
10962 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
10963 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
10964 them up a bit more first.</p>
10965
10966 <p>The development is coordinated on the
10967 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
10968 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
10969 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
10970 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
10971 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
10972 development.</p>
10973
10974       </div>
10975       <div class="tags">
10976
10977
10978         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
10979
10980
10981       </div>
10982     </div>
10983     <div class="padding"></div>
10984
10985     <div class="entry">
10986       <div class="title">
10987         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
10988       </div>
10989       <div class="date">
10990         27th February 2013
10991       </div>
10992       <div class="body">
10993         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
10994 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
10995 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
10996 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
10997 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
10998 (where I am the chair of the board) and
10999 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
11000 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
11001 GNU», with this description:
11002
11003 <p><blockquote>
11004 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
11005 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
11006 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
11007 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
11008 </blockquote></p>
11009
11010 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
11011 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
11012 am really curious how many will show up.  See
11013 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
11014 page</a> for the location details.</p>
11015
11016       </div>
11017       <div class="tags">
11018
11019
11020         Tags: <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/personvern">personvern</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>.
11021
11022
11023       </div>
11024     </div>
11025     <div class="padding"></div>
11026
11027     <div class="entry">
11028       <div class="title">
11029         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
11030       </div>
11031       <div class="date">
11032         15th February 2013
11033       </div>
11034       <div class="body">
11035         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
11036 now a great source of free maps available from
11037 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
11038 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
11039 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
11040 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
11041 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
11042 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
11043 page for descriptions).</p>
11044
11045 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
11046 map you can just edit the
11047 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
11048 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
11049
11050       </div>
11051       <div class="tags">
11052
11053
11054         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>.
11055
11056
11057       </div>
11058     </div>
11059     <div class="padding"></div>
11060
11061     <div class="entry">
11062       <div class="title">
11063         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
11064       </div>
11065       <div class="date">
11066         12th February 2013
11067       </div>
11068       <div class="body">
11069         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
11070 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
11071 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
11072 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
11073 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
11074 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
11075 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
11076 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
11077 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
11078 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
11079 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
11080 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
11081 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
11082 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
11083 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
11084 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
11085
11086 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
11087 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
11088 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
11089 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
11090 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
11091 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
11092 fields:</p>
11093
11094 <p><pre>
11095 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
11096 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
11097 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
11098 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
11099 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
11100 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
11101 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
11102 </pre></p>
11103
11104 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
11105 answer regarding
11106 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
11107 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
11108 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
11109 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
11110
11111 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
11112
11113 <p><pre>
11114 BEGIN:VCARD
11115 VERSION:2.1
11116 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
11117 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
11118 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
11119 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
11120 REV:20130212T095000Z
11121 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
11122 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
11123 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
11124 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
11125 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
11126 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
11127 END:VCARD
11128 </pre></p>
11129
11130 <p>The resulting QR code created using
11131 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
11132 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
11133 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
11134 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
11135 system.</p>
11136
11137 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
11138
11139 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
11140 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
11141 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
11142 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
11143
11144 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
11145 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
11146
11147       </div>
11148       <div class="tags">
11149
11150
11151         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
11152
11153
11154       </div>
11155     </div>
11156     <div class="padding"></div>
11157
11158     <div class="entry">
11159       <div class="title">
11160         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
11161       </div>
11162       <div class="date">
11163         10th February 2013
11164       </div>
11165       <div class="body">
11166         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
11167
11168 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
11169 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
11170 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
11171 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
11172 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
11173 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
11174 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
11175 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
11176 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
11177 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
11178 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
11179
11180 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
11181 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
11182 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
11183 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
11184 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
11185 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
11186 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
11187 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
11188 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
11189 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
11190 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
11191 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
11192 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
11193 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
11194 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
11195 ones own
11196 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
11197 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
11198 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
11199 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
11200 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
11201 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
11202 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
11203 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
11204 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
11205 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
11206 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
11207
11208 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
11209 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
11210 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
11211 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
11212 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
11213 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
11214
11215 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
11216 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
11217 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
11218
11219       </div>
11220       <div class="tags">
11221
11222
11223         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11224
11225
11226       </div>
11227     </div>
11228     <div class="padding"></div>
11229
11230     <div class="entry">
11231       <div class="title">
11232         <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>
11233       </div>
11234       <div class="date">
11235          2nd February 2013
11236       </div>
11237       <div class="body">
11238         <p>My
11239 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
11240 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
11241 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
11242 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
11243 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
11244 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
11245 version too.</p>
11246
11247 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
11248 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
11249 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
11250 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
11251 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
11252 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
11253 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
11254 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
11255
11256 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
11257 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
11258 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
11259 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
11260 it. :)</p>
11261
11262 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
11263 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
11264 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11265
11266       </div>
11267       <div class="tags">
11268
11269
11270         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>.
11271
11272
11273       </div>
11274     </div>
11275     <div class="padding"></div>
11276
11277     <div class="entry">
11278       <div class="title">
11279         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
11280       </div>
11281       <div class="date">
11282         22nd January 2013
11283       </div>
11284       <div class="body">
11285         <p>Yesterday, I
11286 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
11287 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
11288 pluggable hardware devices, which I
11289 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
11290 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
11291 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
11292 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
11293 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
11294 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
11295 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
11296 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
11297 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
11298 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
11299
11300 <pre>
11301 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
11302 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
11303 </pre>
11304
11305 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
11306 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
11307 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
11308 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
11309
11310 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
11311 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
11312 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
11313 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
11314 word.</p>
11315
11316 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
11317 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
11318 process.</p>
11319
11320 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
11321 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
11322
11323       </div>
11324       <div class="tags">
11325
11326
11327         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>.
11328
11329
11330       </div>
11331     </div>
11332     <div class="padding"></div>
11333
11334     <div class="entry">
11335       <div class="title">
11336         <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>
11337       </div>
11338       <div class="date">
11339         21st January 2013
11340       </div>
11341       <div class="body">
11342         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
11343 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
11344 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
11345 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
11346 it, fetch the
11347 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
11348 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
11349 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
11350 autostart script.</p>
11351
11352 <p>The design is simple:</p>
11353
11354 <ul>
11355
11356 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
11357 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
11358
11359 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
11360 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
11361 initially did.</li>
11362
11363 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
11364 the APT database, a database
11365 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
11366 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
11367
11368 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
11369 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
11370 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
11371 package or packages.</li>
11372
11373 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
11374 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
11375
11376 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
11377 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
11378
11379 </ul>
11380
11381 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
11382 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
11383 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
11384 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
11385
11386 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
11387 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
11388 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
11389 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
11390 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
11391
11392 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
11393 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
11394 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
11395 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
11396 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
11397 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
11398 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
11399 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
11400
11401 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
11402 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
11403 '<tt>svn checkout
11404 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
11405 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
11406 devscripts package.</p>
11407
11408 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
11409 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
11410 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
11411 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
11412 instructions</a> for details.</p>
11413
11414       </div>
11415       <div class="tags">
11416
11417
11418         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>.
11419
11420
11421       </div>
11422     </div>
11423     <div class="padding"></div>
11424
11425     <div class="entry">
11426       <div class="title">
11427         <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>
11428       </div>
11429       <div class="date">
11430         19th January 2013
11431       </div>
11432       <div class="body">
11433         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
11434 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
11435 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
11436 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
11437 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
11438 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
11439 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
11440 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
11441 not a durable solution.
11442
11443 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
11444 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
11445
11446 <ul>
11447
11448 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
11449   than A4).</li>
11450 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
11451 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
11452 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
11453 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
11454 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
11455 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
11456 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
11457 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
11458 size).</li>
11459 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
11460   X.org packages.</li>
11461 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
11462   the time).
11463
11464 </ul>
11465
11466 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
11467 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
11468 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
11469 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
11470 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
11471 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
11472 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
11473 still be useful.</p>
11474
11475 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
11476 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
11477 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
11478 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
11479 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
11480 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
11481
11482       </div>
11483       <div class="tags">
11484
11485
11486         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>.
11487
11488
11489       </div>
11490     </div>
11491     <div class="padding"></div>
11492
11493     <div class="entry">
11494       <div class="title">
11495         <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>
11496       </div>
11497       <div class="date">
11498         18th January 2013
11499       </div>
11500       <div class="body">
11501         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
11502 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
11503 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
11504 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
11505 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
11506 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
11507 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
11508
11509 <pre>
11510 #!/usr/bin/python
11511 import sys
11512 import apt
11513 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
11514     cache = apt.Cache()
11515     cache.open(None)
11516     thepkgs = []
11517     for pkg in cache:
11518         version = pkg.candidate
11519         if version is None:
11520             version = pkg.installed
11521         if version is None:
11522             continue
11523         record = version.record
11524         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
11525             continue
11526         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
11527         for t in mime_types:
11528             t = t.rstrip().strip()
11529             if t == mimetype:
11530                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
11531     return thepkgs
11532 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
11533 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
11534     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
11535 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
11536 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
11537     print "  %s" %pkg
11538 </pre>
11539
11540 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
11541
11542 <pre>
11543 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
11544 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
11545   gecko-mediaplayer
11546 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
11547 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
11548   browser-plugin-gnash
11549 %
11550 </pre>
11551
11552 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
11553 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
11554 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
11555 anyone working on adding it?</p>
11556
11557 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
11558 request for icweasel support for this feature is
11559 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
11560 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
11561 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
11562 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
11563
11564       </div>
11565       <div class="tags">
11566
11567
11568         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>.
11569
11570
11571       </div>
11572     </div>
11573     <div class="padding"></div>
11574
11575     <div class="entry">
11576       <div class="title">
11577         <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>
11578       </div>
11579       <div class="date">
11580         16th January 2013
11581       </div>
11582       <div class="body">
11583         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
11584 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
11585 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
11586 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
11587 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
11588 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
11589 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
11590 downloaded by the browser.</p>
11591
11592 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
11593 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
11594 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
11595 can be found on the
11596 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
11597 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
11598 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
11599 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
11600 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
11601
11602 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
11603
11604 <pre>
11605   count MIME type
11606   ----- -----------------------
11607      32 text/plain
11608      30 audio/mpeg
11609      29 image/png
11610      28 image/jpeg
11611      27 application/ogg
11612      26 audio/x-mp3
11613      25 image/tiff
11614      25 image/gif
11615      22 image/bmp
11616      22 audio/x-wav
11617      20 audio/x-flac
11618      19 audio/x-mpegurl
11619      18 video/x-ms-asf
11620      18 audio/x-musepack
11621      18 audio/x-mpeg
11622      18 application/x-ogg
11623      17 video/mpeg
11624      17 audio/x-scpls
11625      17 audio/ogg
11626      16 video/x-ms-wmv
11627 </pre>
11628
11629 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
11630
11631 <pre>
11632   count MIME type
11633   ----- -----------------------
11634      33 text/plain
11635      32 image/png
11636      32 image/jpeg
11637      29 audio/mpeg
11638      27 image/gif
11639      26 image/tiff
11640      26 application/ogg
11641      25 audio/x-mp3
11642      22 image/bmp
11643      21 audio/x-wav
11644      19 audio/x-mpegurl
11645      19 audio/x-mpeg
11646      18 video/mpeg
11647      18 audio/x-scpls
11648      18 audio/x-flac
11649      18 application/x-ogg
11650      17 video/x-ms-asf
11651      17 text/html
11652      17 audio/x-musepack
11653      16 image/x-xbitmap
11654 </pre>
11655
11656 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
11657
11658 <pre>
11659   count MIME type
11660   ----- -----------------------
11661      31 text/plain
11662      31 image/png
11663      31 image/jpeg
11664      29 audio/mpeg
11665      28 application/ogg
11666      27 image/gif
11667      26 image/tiff
11668      26 audio/x-mp3
11669      23 audio/x-wav
11670      22 image/bmp
11671      21 audio/x-flac
11672      20 audio/x-mpegurl
11673      19 audio/x-mpeg
11674      18 video/x-ms-asf
11675      18 video/mpeg
11676      18 audio/x-scpls
11677      18 application/x-ogg
11678      17 audio/x-musepack
11679      16 video/x-ms-wmv
11680      16 video/x-msvideo
11681 </pre>
11682
11683 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
11684 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
11685 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
11686 issues.</p>
11687
11688 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
11689 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
11690
11691       </div>
11692       <div class="tags">
11693
11694
11695         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>.
11696
11697
11698       </div>
11699     </div>
11700     <div class="padding"></div>
11701
11702     <div class="entry">
11703       <div class="title">
11704         <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>
11705       </div>
11706       <div class="date">
11707         15th January 2013
11708       </div>
11709       <div class="body">
11710         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
11711 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
11712 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
11713 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
11714 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
11715 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
11716 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
11717 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
11718 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
11719 packages.</p>
11720
11721 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
11722 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
11723 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
11724 modalias.</p>
11725
11726 <p><blockquote>
11727 Package: package-name
11728 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
11729 </blockquote></p>
11730
11731 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
11732 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
11733
11734 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
11735 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
11736
11737 <p><blockquote>
11738 Package: cheese
11739 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
11740 </blockquote></p>
11741
11742 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
11743 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
11744
11745 <p><blockquote>
11746 Package: pcmciautils
11747 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
11748 </blockquote></p>
11749
11750 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
11751 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
11752
11753 <p><blockquote>
11754 Package: colorhug-client
11755 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
11756 </blockquote></p>
11757
11758 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
11759 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
11760 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
11761
11762 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
11763 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
11764 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
11765 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
11766 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
11767 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
11768 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
11769 Raring.</p>
11770
11771 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
11772 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
11773 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
11774 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
11775 try the
11776 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
11777 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
11778 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
11779 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
11780
11781 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
11782 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
11783
11784 <p><blockquote>
11785 % ./hw-support-lookup
11786 <br>yubikey-personalization
11787 <br>%
11788 </blockquote></p>
11789
11790 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
11791 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
11792
11793 <p><blockquote>
11794 % ./hw-support-lookup
11795 <br>pcmciautils
11796 <br>%
11797 </blockquote></p>
11798
11799 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
11800 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
11801 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
11802
11803 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
11804 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
11805 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
11806 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
11807 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
11808 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
11809 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
11810 see if it work.</p>
11811
11812 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
11813 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
11814 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
11815 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
11816
11817       </div>
11818       <div class="tags">
11819
11820
11821         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>.
11822
11823
11824       </div>
11825     </div>
11826     <div class="padding"></div>
11827
11828     <div class="entry">
11829       <div class="title">
11830         <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>
11831       </div>
11832       <div class="date">
11833         14th January 2013
11834       </div>
11835       <div class="body">
11836         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
11837 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
11838 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
11839 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
11840 in
11841 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
11842 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
11843
11844 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
11845
11846 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
11847 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
11848 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
11849 &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;,
11850 &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
11851 &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;.
11852
11853 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
11854 this shell script:</p>
11855
11856 <pre>
11857 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
11858 </pre>
11859
11860 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
11861 using modinfo:</p>
11862
11863 <pre>
11864 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
11865 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
11866 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
11867 %
11868 </pre>
11869
11870 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
11871
11872 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
11873 Bridge memory controller:</p>
11874
11875 <p><blockquote>
11876 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
11877 </blockquote></p>
11878
11879 <p>This represent these values:</p>
11880
11881 <pre>
11882  v   00008086  (vendor)
11883  d   00002770  (device)
11884  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
11885  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
11886  bc  06        (bus class)
11887  sc  00        (bus subclass)
11888  i   00        (interface)
11889 </pre>
11890
11891 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
11892 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
11893 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
11894 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
11895
11896 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
11897 means.</p>
11898
11899 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
11900
11901 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
11902 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
11903
11904 <p><blockquote>
11905 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
11906 </blockquote></p>
11907
11908 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
11909
11910 <pre>
11911  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
11912  p    0001  (device product)
11913  d    0206  (bcddevice)
11914  dc     09  (device class)
11915  dsc    00  (device subclass)
11916  dp     00  (device protocol)
11917  ic     09  (interface class)
11918  isc    00  (interface subclass)
11919  ip     00  (interface protocol)
11920 </pre>
11921
11922 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
11923 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
11924 these alias entries show up:</p>
11925
11926 <p><blockquote>
11927 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
11928 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
11929 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
11930 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
11931 </blockquote></p>
11932
11933 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
11934 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
11935 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
11936
11937 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
11938
11939 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
11940 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
11941
11942 <p><blockquote>
11943 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
11944 </blockquote></p>
11945
11946 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
11947
11948 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
11949
11950 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
11951 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
11952 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
11953
11954 <p><blockquote>
11955 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
11956 </blockquote></p>
11957
11958 <p>The values present are</p>
11959
11960 <pre>
11961  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
11962  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
11963  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
11964  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
11965  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
11966  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
11967  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
11968  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
11969  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
11970  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
11971  ct   10             (chassis type)
11972  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
11973 </pre>
11974
11975 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
11976 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
11977
11978 <pre>
11979   3 Desktop
11980   4 Low Profile Desktop
11981   5 Pizza Box
11982   6 Mini Tower
11983   7 Tower
11984   8 Portable
11985   9 Laptop
11986  10 Notebook
11987  11 Hand Held
11988  12 Docking Station
11989  13 All In One
11990  14 Sub Notebook
11991  15 Space-saving
11992  16 Lunch Box
11993  17 Main Server Chassis
11994  18 Expansion Chassis
11995  19 Sub Chassis
11996  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
11997  21 Peripheral Chassis
11998  22 RAID Chassis
11999  23 Rack Mount Chassis
12000  24 Sealed-case PC
12001  25 Multi-system
12002  26 CompactPCI
12003  27 AdvancedTCA
12004  28 Blade
12005  29 Blade Enclosing
12006 </pre>
12007
12008 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
12009 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
12010 claim it is a desktop.</p>
12011
12012 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
12013
12014 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
12015 test machine:</p>
12016
12017 <p><blockquote>
12018 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
12019 </blockquote></p>
12020
12021 <p>The values present are</p>
12022
12023 <pre>
12024   ty  01  (type)
12025   pr  00  (prototype)
12026   id  00  (id)
12027   ex  00  (extra)
12028 </pre>
12029
12030 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
12031 the valid values are.</p>
12032
12033 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
12034
12035 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
12036 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
12037 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
12038 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
12039 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
12040 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
12041 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
12042
12043 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
12044
12045 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
12046 one can use the following shell script:</p>
12047
12048 <pre>
12049   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
12050     echo "$id" ; \
12051     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
12052   done
12053 </pre>
12054
12055 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
12056 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
12057
12058 <pre>
12059   acpi:ACPI0003:
12060     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
12061   acpi:device:
12062   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
12063   acpi:IBM0068:
12064     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
12065     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
12066     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
12067     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
12068   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
12069     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
12070     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
12071     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
12072   [...]
12073 </pre>
12074
12075 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
12076 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
12077 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
12078 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
12079
12080 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
12081 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
12082 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
12083
12084       </div>
12085       <div class="tags">
12086
12087
12088         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>.
12089
12090
12091       </div>
12092     </div>
12093     <div class="padding"></div>
12094
12095     <div class="entry">
12096       <div class="title">
12097         <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>
12098       </div>
12099       <div class="date">
12100         10th January 2013
12101       </div>
12102       <div class="body">
12103         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
12104 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
12105 Launcher and updated the Debian package
12106 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
12107 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
12108 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
12109 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
12110 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
12111 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
12112 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
12113 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
12114 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
12115 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
12116 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
12117 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
12118 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
12119 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
12120 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
12121
12122       </div>
12123       <div class="tags">
12124
12125
12126         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>.
12127
12128
12129       </div>
12130     </div>
12131     <div class="padding"></div>
12132
12133     <div class="entry">
12134       <div class="title">
12135         <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>
12136       </div>
12137       <div class="date">
12138          9th January 2013
12139       </div>
12140       <div class="body">
12141         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
12142 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
12143 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
12144 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
12145 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
12146 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
12147 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
12148 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
12149 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
12150 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
12151 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
12152
12153 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
12154 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
12155 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
12156 simple:
12157
12158 <ul>
12159
12160 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
12161   starting when a user log in.</li>
12162
12163 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
12164   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
12165
12166 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
12167   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
12168   packages.</li>
12169
12170 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
12171   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
12172
12173 </ul>
12174
12175 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
12176 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
12177 discover database to find packages and
12178 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
12179 packages.</p>
12180
12181 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
12182 draft package is now checked into
12183 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
12184 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
12185 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
12186 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
12187 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
12188 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
12189 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
12190 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
12191 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
12192 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
12193 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
12194 because of the freeze).</p>
12195
12196 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
12197 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
12198 inserted):</p>
12199
12200 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
12201
12202 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
12203 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
12204 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
12205
12206 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
12207 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
12208 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
12209 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
12210 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
12211 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
12212 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
12213
12214 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
12215 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
12216 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
12217 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
12218 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
12219 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
12220 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
12221 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
12222 not be installed?</p>
12223
12224 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
12225 please send me an email. :)</p>
12226
12227       </div>
12228       <div class="tags">
12229
12230
12231         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>.
12232
12233
12234       </div>
12235     </div>
12236     <div class="padding"></div>
12237
12238     <div class="entry">
12239       <div class="title">
12240         <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>
12241       </div>
12242       <div class="date">
12243          2nd January 2013
12244       </div>
12245       <div class="body">
12246         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
12247 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
12248 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
12249 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
12250 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
12251 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
12252 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
12253 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
12254 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
12255 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
12256
12257 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
12258 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
12259 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
12260
12261       </div>
12262       <div class="tags">
12263
12264
12265         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>.
12266
12267
12268       </div>
12269     </div>
12270     <div class="padding"></div>
12271
12272     <div class="entry">
12273       <div class="title">
12274         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
12275       </div>
12276       <div class="date">
12277         28th December 2012
12278       </div>
12279       <div class="body">
12280         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
12281 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
12282 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
12283 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
12284 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
12285 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
12286 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
12287 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
12288 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
12289 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
12290 followed by many others. :)</p>
12291
12292 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
12293 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
12294 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
12295 you want to donate to the project.</p>
12296
12297       </div>
12298       <div class="tags">
12299
12300
12301         Tags: <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>.
12302
12303
12304       </div>
12305     </div>
12306     <div class="padding"></div>
12307
12308     <div class="entry">
12309       <div class="title">
12310         <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>
12311       </div>
12312       <div class="date">
12313         25th December 2012
12314       </div>
12315       <div class="body">
12316         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
12317 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
12318
12319 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
12320 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
12321 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
12322 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
12323 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
12324 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
12325 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
12326 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
12327 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
12328 name.</p>
12329
12330 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
12331 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
12332 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
12333
12334 <blockquote><pre>
12335 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
12336 cd bitcoin
12337 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
12338 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
12339 </pre></blockquote>
12340
12341 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
12342 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
12343 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
12344 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
12345 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
12346 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
12347 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
12348 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
12349 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
12350
12351 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
12352 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
12353 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
12354
12355       </div>
12356       <div class="tags">
12357
12358
12359         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>.
12360
12361
12362       </div>
12363     </div>
12364     <div class="padding"></div>
12365
12366     <div class="entry">
12367       <div class="title">
12368         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
12369       </div>
12370       <div class="date">
12371         21st December 2012
12372       </div>
12373       <div class="body">
12374         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
12375 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
12376 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
12377 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
12378 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
12379 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
12380 is now maintained by a
12381 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
12382 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
12383 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
12384 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
12385 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
12386 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
12387 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
12388 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
12389 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
12390 Corallo in a
12391 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
12392 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
12393 Debian package.</p>
12394
12395 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
12396 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
12397 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
12398 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
12399 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
12400 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
12401 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
12402 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
12403 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
12404 new version to unstable.
12405
12406 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
12407 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
12408 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
12409 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
12410 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
12411 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
12412 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
12413 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
12414 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
12415 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
12416 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
12417 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
12418 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
12419 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
12420 have not tested them.</p>
12421
12422 <p>My
12423 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
12424 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
12425 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
12426 years ago, as can be
12427 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
12428 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
12429 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
12430 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
12431 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
12432 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
12433 the same address as last time,
12434 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
12435
12436       </div>
12437       <div class="tags">
12438
12439
12440         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>.
12441
12442
12443       </div>
12444     </div>
12445     <div class="padding"></div>
12446
12447     <div class="entry">
12448       <div class="title">
12449         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
12450       </div>
12451       <div class="date">
12452         18th December 2012
12453       </div>
12454       <div class="body">
12455         <p>A few days ago I came across
12456 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
12457 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
12458 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
12459 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
12460 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
12461 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
12462 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
12463 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
12464 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
12465
12466 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
12467 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
12468 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
12469 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
12470
12471 <blockquote><pre>
12472 2004-05-27 Book Store
12473       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
12474       Liabilities:Visa
12475 </pre></blockquote>
12476
12477 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
12478 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
12479 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
12480 Spang</a>,
12481 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
12482 Keen</a>,
12483 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
12484 Cantino</a> and
12485 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
12486 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
12487 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
12488 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
12489 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
12490
12491 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
12492 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
12493 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
12494 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
12495 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
12496
12497 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
12498 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
12499 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
12500 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
12501 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
12502 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
12503 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
12504 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
12505 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
12506
12507       </div>
12508       <div class="tags">
12509
12510
12511         Tags: <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>.
12512
12513
12514       </div>
12515     </div>
12516     <div class="padding"></div>
12517
12518     <div class="entry">
12519       <div class="title">
12520         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
12521       </div>
12522       <div class="date">
12523          6th December 2012
12524       </div>
12525       <div class="body">
12526         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
12527 Oslo</a>, we use the
12528 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
12529 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
12530 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
12531 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
12532 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
12533 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
12534 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
12535 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
12536 Python.</p>
12537
12538 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
12539 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
12540 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
12541 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
12542 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
12543 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
12544
12545 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
12546 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
12547 user currently logged in:</p>
12548
12549 <blockquote><pre>
12550 #!/usr/bin/env python
12551 import getpass
12552 import xmlrpclib
12553 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
12554 username = getpass.getuser()
12555 password = getpass.getpass()
12556 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
12557 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
12558 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
12559 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
12560 result = server.logout(sessionid)
12561 print result
12562 </pre></blockquote>
12563
12564 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
12565 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
12566
12567       </div>
12568       <div class="tags">
12569
12570
12571         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
12572
12573
12574       </div>
12575     </div>
12576     <div class="padding"></div>
12577
12578     <div class="entry">
12579       <div class="title">
12580         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
12581       </div>
12582       <div class="date">
12583         17th November 2012
12584       </div>
12585       <div class="body">
12586         <p>While working on a
12587 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
12588 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
12589 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
12590 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
12591 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
12592 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
12593
12594 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
12595 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
12596 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
12597 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
12598 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
12599 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
12600 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
12601 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
12602 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
12603 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
12604 arguments.</p>
12605
12606 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
12607 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
12608 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
12609 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
12610 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
12611 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
12612 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
12613 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
12614
12615 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
12616 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
12617 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
12618 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
12619 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
12620 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
12621 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
12622 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
12623 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
12624 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
12625 correct right holder.</p>
12626
12627 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
12628 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
12629 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
12630 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
12631 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
12632 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
12633 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
12634 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
12635 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
12636 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
12637 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
12638 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
12639 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
12640 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
12641
12642 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
12643 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
12644 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
12645
12646 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
12647 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
12648
12649       </div>
12650       <div class="tags">
12651
12652
12653         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
12654
12655
12656       </div>
12657     </div>
12658     <div class="padding"></div>
12659
12660     <div class="entry">
12661       <div class="title">
12662         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
12663       </div>
12664       <div class="date">
12665         14th November 2012
12666       </div>
12667       <div class="body">
12668         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
12669 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12670 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
12671 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
12672 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
12673 the people behind the German
12674 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
12675 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
12676 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
12677
12678 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12679
12680 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
12681 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
12682 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
12683
12684 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
12685 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
12686 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
12687 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
12688 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
12689 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
12690
12691 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
12692 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
12693 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
12694 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
12695 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
12696 relationship management and the communication processes in the
12697 project.</p>
12698
12699 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
12700 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
12701 and a yoga teacher.</p>
12702
12703 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
12704 project?</strong></p>
12705
12706 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
12707
12708 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
12709 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
12710 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
12711 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
12712 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
12713 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
12714 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
12715 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
12716 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
12717 parents.</p>
12718
12719 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
12720 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
12721 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
12722 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
12723 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
12724 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
12725 Germany.</p>
12726
12727 <p>For information about our school project you can read
12728 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
12729 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
12730
12731 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
12732 Edu?</strong></p>
12733
12734 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
12735 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
12736
12737 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
12738 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
12739 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
12740 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
12741 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
12742 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
12743 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
12744 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
12745 teachers, parents...</p>
12746
12747 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
12748 Edu?</strong></p>
12749
12750 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
12751 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
12752
12753 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
12754 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
12755 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
12756 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
12757 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
12758
12759 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
12760 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
12761 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
12762 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
12763 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
12764 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
12765 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
12766
12767 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12768
12769 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
12770 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
12771 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
12772 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
12773
12774 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12775 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12776
12777 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
12778 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
12779 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
12780 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
12781 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
12782
12783 <ul>
12784
12785 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
12786 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
12787 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
12788
12789 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
12790 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
12791 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
12792 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
12793 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
12794 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
12795 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
12796
12797 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
12798 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
12799 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
12800 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
12801
12802 </ul>
12803
12804       </div>
12805       <div class="tags">
12806
12807
12808         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
12809
12810
12811       </div>
12812     </div>
12813     <div class="padding"></div>
12814
12815     <div class="entry">
12816       <div class="title">
12817         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
12818       </div>
12819       <div class="date">
12820          4th November 2012
12821       </div>
12822       <div class="body">
12823         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
12824 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
12825 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
12826 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
12827 see how a member of the bitcoin community
12828 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
12829 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
12830 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
12831 competition.  My thoughts go to the
12832 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
12833 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
12834 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
12835 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
12836 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
12837
12838 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
12839 that the community already seem to have
12840 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
12841 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
12842 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
12843 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
12844 wealth is available.</p>
12845
12846       </div>
12847       <div class="tags">
12848
12849
12850         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</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>.
12851
12852
12853       </div>
12854     </div>
12855     <div class="padding"></div>
12856
12857     <div class="entry">
12858       <div class="title">
12859         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
12860       </div>
12861       <div class="date">
12862         26th October 2012
12863       </div>
12864       <div class="body">
12865         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
12866 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
12867 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
12868 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
12869 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
12870 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
12871 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
12872 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
12873 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
12874 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
12875 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
12876 it every time.</p>
12877
12878 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
12879 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
12880 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
12881 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
12882 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
12883 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
12884 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
12885 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
12886 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
12887 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
12888 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
12889 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
12890
12891 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
12892 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
12893 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
12894 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
12895 article: First the unplanned outage:
12896
12897 <blockquote><pre>
12898 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
12899 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
12900 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
12901 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
12902 Duration:    40 minutes
12903 Scope:       Exchange 2003
12904 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
12905              a cluster failover.
12906
12907 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
12908              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
12909 Technician:  [xxx]
12910 </pre></blockquote>
12911
12912 Next the planned outage:
12913
12914 <blockquote><pre>
12915 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
12916 Severity:    Major (Planned)
12917 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
12918 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
12919 Duration:    10 hours
12920 Scope:       H2 Transport
12921 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
12922              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
12923              4510s.
12924 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
12925              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
12926              connectivity.
12927 Technician:  [xxx]
12928 </pre></blockquote>
12929
12930 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
12931 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
12932 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
12933 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
12934 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
12935 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
12936 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
12937
12938 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
12939 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
12940 university too.  We do register
12941 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
12942 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
12943 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
12944 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
12945 for other sites to consider too?</p>
12946
12947       </div>
12948       <div class="tags">
12949
12950
12951         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
12952
12953
12954       </div>
12955     </div>
12956     <div class="padding"></div>
12957
12958     <div class="entry">
12959       <div class="title">
12960         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
12961       </div>
12962       <div class="date">
12963         22nd October 2012
12964       </div>
12965       <div class="body">
12966         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
12967 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
12968 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
12969 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
12970 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
12971 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
12972 background information is available in Norwegian from
12973 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
12974 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
12975 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
12976 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
12977 willing to
12978 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
12979 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
12980 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
12981 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
12982 sounded like
12983 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
12984 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
12985 later.</p>
12986
12987 <p>And thought this action is
12988 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
12989 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
12990 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
12991 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
12992 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
12993 rights.</p>
12994
12995 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
12996 unacceptable terms.  For example
12997 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
12998 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
12999 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
13000 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
13001 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
13002
13003 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
13004 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
13005 restored the account of the user, as reported by
13006 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
13007 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
13008 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
13009 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
13010 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
13011 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
13012 reading two opinions from
13013 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
13014 Phipps</a> and
13015 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
13016 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
13017 details about the original story.</p>
13018
13019       </div>
13020       <div class="tags">
13021
13022
13023         Tags: <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/personvern">personvern</a>.
13024
13025
13026       </div>
13027     </div>
13028     <div class="padding"></div>
13029
13030     <div class="entry">
13031       <div class="title">
13032         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
13033       </div>
13034       <div class="date">
13035         18th October 2012
13036       </div>
13037       <div class="body">
13038         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
13039 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
13040 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
13041 across a marvellous drawing by
13042 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
13043 visualising some of what is going on.
13044
13045 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
13046 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
13047
13048 <blockquote>
13049 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
13050 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
13051 </blockquote>
13052
13053 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
13054 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
13055 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
13056 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
13057 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
13058 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
13059
13060       </div>
13061       <div class="tags">
13062
13063
13064         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
13065
13066
13067       </div>
13068     </div>
13069     <div class="padding"></div>
13070
13071     <div class="entry">
13072       <div class="title">
13073         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
13074       </div>
13075       <div class="date">
13076         12th October 2012
13077       </div>
13078       <div class="body">
13079         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
13080 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
13081 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
13082 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
13083 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
13084 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
13085 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
13086 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
13087 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
13088 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
13089 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
13090 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
13091 matter".</p>
13092
13093 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
13094 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
13095 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
13096 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
13097 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
13098 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
13099 to argue its side.</p>
13100
13101 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
13102 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
13103 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
13104 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
13105
13106 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
13107 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
13108 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
13109
13110       </div>
13111       <div class="tags">
13112
13113
13114         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
13115
13116
13117       </div>
13118     </div>
13119     <div class="padding"></div>
13120
13121     <div class="entry">
13122       <div class="title">
13123         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
13124       </div>
13125       <div class="date">
13126          3rd October 2012
13127       </div>
13128       <div class="body">
13129         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
13130 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
13131 the computer science book collection available in his local
13132 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
13133 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
13134 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
13135 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
13136 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
13137 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
13138 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
13139 recently published books.</p>
13140
13141 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
13142 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
13143 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
13144 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
13145 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
13146 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
13147 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
13148 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
13149 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
13150 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
13151 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
13152 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
13153 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
13154 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
13155 for the library that evening.</p>
13156
13157 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
13158 going to know that for example
13159 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
13160 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
13161 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
13162 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
13163 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
13164 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
13165 book right away.</p>
13166
13167       </div>
13168       <div class="tags">
13169
13170
13171         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13172
13173
13174       </div>
13175     </div>
13176     <div class="padding"></div>
13177
13178     <div class="entry">
13179       <div class="title">
13180         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
13181       </div>
13182       <div class="date">
13183         23rd September 2012
13184       </div>
13185       <div class="body">
13186         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
13187 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
13188 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
13189 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
13190 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
13191 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
13192
13193 When I started, I
13194 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
13195 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
13196 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
13197 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
13198 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
13199 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
13200 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
13201
13202 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
13203
13204 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
13205 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
13206 the project files currently available from
13207 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
13208
13209 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
13210 the updated
13211 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
13212 and
13213 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
13214 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
13215 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
13216 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
13217
13218       </div>
13219       <div class="tags">
13220
13221
13222         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
13223
13224
13225       </div>
13226     </div>
13227     <div class="padding"></div>
13228
13229     <div class="entry">
13230       <div class="title">
13231         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
13232       </div>
13233       <div class="date">
13234         17th September 2012
13235       </div>
13236       <div class="body">
13237         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
13238 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13239 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
13240 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
13241 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
13242 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
13243 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
13244
13245 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13246
13247 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
13248 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
13249 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
13250 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
13251 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
13252 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
13253 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
13254 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
13255 training is anyway very important</p>
13256
13257 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
13258 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
13259 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
13260 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
13261 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
13262
13263 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13264 project?</strong></p>
13265
13266 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
13267 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
13268 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
13269 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
13270 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
13271 hole.</p>
13272
13273 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13274 Edu?</strong></p>
13275
13276 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
13277 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
13278 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
13279 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
13280 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
13281 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
13282 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
13283 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
13284 hassle.</p>
13285
13286 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13287 Edu?</strong></p>
13288
13289 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
13290 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
13291 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
13292 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
13293 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
13294 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
13295 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
13296 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
13297
13298 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13299
13300 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
13301 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
13302 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
13303 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
13304 has the same...</p>
13305
13306 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
13307 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
13308 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
13309 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
13310
13311 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13312 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13313
13314 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
13315 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
13316 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
13317
13318 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
13319 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
13320 don't.</p>
13321
13322 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
13323 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
13324 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
13325 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
13326 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
13327 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
13328 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
13329
13330       </div>
13331       <div class="tags">
13332
13333
13334         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
13335
13336
13337       </div>
13338     </div>
13339     <div class="padding"></div>
13340
13341     <div class="entry">
13342       <div class="title">
13343         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
13344       </div>
13345       <div class="date">
13346         15th September 2012
13347       </div>
13348       <div class="body">
13349         <p>After the
13350 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
13351 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
13352 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
13353 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
13354 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
13355 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
13356 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
13357 was
13358 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
13359 formal working group should be formed.</p>
13360
13361 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
13362 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
13363 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
13364 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
13365 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
13366 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
13367 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
13368 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
13369
13370 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
13371 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
13372 IETF.</p>
13373
13374       </div>
13375       <div class="tags">
13376
13377
13378         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</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>.
13379
13380
13381       </div>
13382     </div>
13383     <div class="padding"></div>
13384
13385     <div class="entry">
13386       <div class="title">
13387         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
13388       </div>
13389       <div class="date">
13390         12th September 2012
13391       </div>
13392       <div class="body">
13393         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
13394 publication of of
13395 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
13396 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
13397 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
13398 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
13399 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
13400 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
13401 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
13402 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
13403 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
13404 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
13405
13406 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
13407 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
13408 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
13409 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
13410
13411 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
13412 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
13413
13414       </div>
13415       <div class="tags">
13416
13417
13418         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</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>.
13419
13420
13421       </div>
13422     </div>
13423     <div class="padding"></div>
13424
13425     <div class="entry">
13426       <div class="title">
13427         <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>
13428       </div>
13429       <div class="date">
13430          7th September 2012
13431       </div>
13432       <div class="body">
13433         <p>As I
13434 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
13435 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
13436 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
13437 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
13438 repository for the project</a>.</p>
13439
13440 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
13441 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
13442 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
13443 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
13444
13445 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
13446 PostScript formats at
13447 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
13448 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
13449
13450       </div>
13451       <div class="tags">
13452
13453
13454         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>.
13455
13456
13457       </div>
13458     </div>
13459     <div class="padding"></div>
13460
13461     <div class="entry">
13462       <div class="title">
13463         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
13464       </div>
13465       <div class="date">
13466         23rd August 2012
13467       </div>
13468       <div class="body">
13469         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
13470 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
13471 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
13472 revisit the great site
13473 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
13474 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
13475 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
13476
13477       </div>
13478       <div class="tags">
13479
13480
13481         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
13482
13483
13484       </div>
13485     </div>
13486     <div class="padding"></div>
13487
13488     <div class="entry">
13489       <div class="title">
13490         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
13491       </div>
13492       <div class="date">
13493         17th August 2012
13494       </div>
13495       <div class="body">
13496         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
13497 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
13498 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
13499 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
13500 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
13501 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
13502 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
13503 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
13504 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
13505 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
13506 summer I
13507 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
13508 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
13509 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
13510
13511 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
13512 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
13513 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
13514 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
13515 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
13516 progress:</p>
13517
13518 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
13519
13520 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
13521 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
13522 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
13523 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
13524 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
13525 english version of the docbook source.</p>
13526
13527 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
13528 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
13529 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
13530 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
13531 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
13532 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
13533 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
13534 project files currently available from <a
13535 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
13536
13537 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
13538 the updated
13539 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
13540 and
13541 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
13542 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
13543 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
13544 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
13545
13546       </div>
13547       <div class="tags">
13548
13549
13550         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
13551
13552
13553       </div>
13554     </div>
13555     <div class="padding"></div>
13556
13557     <div class="entry">
13558       <div class="title">
13559         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
13560       </div>
13561       <div class="date">
13562         10th August 2012
13563       </div>
13564       <div class="body">
13565         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
13566 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
13567 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
13568 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
13569 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
13570 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
13571 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
13572 case for the language
13573 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
13574 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
13575
13576 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
13577 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
13578 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
13579 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
13580 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
13581
13582 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
13583 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
13584 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
13585 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
13586 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
13587 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
13588 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
13589 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
13590 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
13591 alias for 'nb'.</p>
13592
13593 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
13594 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
13595 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
13596 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
13597 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
13598 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
13599 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
13600 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
13601 at the same time. :(</p>
13602
13603 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
13604 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
13605 processors. :(</p>
13606
13607 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
13608
13609       </div>
13610       <div class="tags">
13611
13612
13613         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
13614
13615
13616       </div>
13617     </div>
13618     <div class="padding"></div>
13619
13620     <div class="entry">
13621       <div class="title">
13622         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
13623       </div>
13624       <div class="date">
13625         31st July 2012
13626       </div>
13627       <div class="body">
13628         <p>I tried to send this text to the
13629 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
13630 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
13631 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
13632 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
13633 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
13634 out.</p>
13635
13636 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
13637 learning curve at the moment.</p>
13638
13639 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
13640 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
13641 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
13642 available from
13643 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
13644 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
13645 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
13646 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
13647 Squeeze.</p>
13648
13649 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
13650 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
13651 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
13652 problems.</p>
13653
13654 <ul>
13655
13656 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
13657    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
13658    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
13659    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
13660    index references spanning several pages (See
13661    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
13662    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
13663    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
13664
13665 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
13666    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
13667    #683163</a>).</li>
13668
13669 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
13670    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
13671    footnote and text body, see
13672    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
13673    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
13674    refs listed are not right).</li>
13675
13676 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
13677
13678 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
13679    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
13680
13681 </ul>
13682
13683 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
13684 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
13685 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
13686
13687 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
13688
13689       </div>
13690       <div class="tags">
13691
13692
13693         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
13694
13695
13696       </div>
13697     </div>
13698     <div class="padding"></div>
13699
13700     <div class="entry">
13701       <div class="title">
13702         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
13703       </div>
13704       <div class="date">
13705         21st July 2012
13706       </div>
13707       <div class="body">
13708         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
13709 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
13710 norwegian version</a> of the book
13711 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
13712 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
13713 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
13714 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
13715 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
13716
13717 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
13718 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
13719 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
13720 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
13721 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
13722 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
13723 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
13724 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
13725 print. :)</p>
13726
13727 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
13728 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
13729 language.</p>
13730
13731       </div>
13732       <div class="tags">
13733
13734
13735         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</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>.
13736
13737
13738       </div>
13739     </div>
13740     <div class="padding"></div>
13741
13742     <div class="entry">
13743       <div class="title">
13744         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
13745       </div>
13746       <div class="date">
13747         16th July 2012
13748       </div>
13749       <div class="body">
13750         <p>I am currently working on a
13751 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
13752 to translate</a> the book
13753 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
13754 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
13755 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
13756 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
13757 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
13758 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
13759 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
13760
13761 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
13762 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
13763 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
13764 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
13765 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
13766 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
13767 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
13768 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
13769 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
13770
13771       </div>
13772       <div class="tags">
13773
13774
13775         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</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>.
13776
13777
13778       </div>
13779     </div>
13780     <div class="padding"></div>
13781
13782     <div class="entry">
13783       <div class="title">
13784         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
13785       </div>
13786       <div class="date">
13787          9th July 2012
13788       </div>
13789       <div class="body">
13790         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
13791 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
13792 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
13793 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
13794 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
13795 to adjust and scale the just released
13796 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13797 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
13798 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
13799
13800 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13801
13802 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
13803 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
13804 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
13805 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
13806 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
13807 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
13808 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
13809 perspective when working with IT.</p>
13810
13811 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13812 project?</strong></p>
13813
13814 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
13815 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
13816 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
13817 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
13818 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
13819 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
13820
13821 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13822 Edu?</strong></p>
13823
13824 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
13825 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
13826 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
13827 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
13828 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
13829 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
13830 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
13831 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
13832 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
13833 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
13834 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
13835 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
13836 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
13837 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
13838 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
13839 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
13840 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
13841 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
13842 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
13843 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
13844 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
13845 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
13846 quicker to update.
13847
13848 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13849 Edu?</strong></p>
13850
13851 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
13852 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
13853 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
13854 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
13855 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
13856 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
13857
13858 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
13859 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
13860 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
13861 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
13862 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
13863 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
13864 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
13865 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
13866 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
13867 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
13868 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
13869 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
13870 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
13871 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
13872 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
13873
13874 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
13875 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
13876 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
13877 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
13878 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
13879 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
13880 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
13881 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
13882
13883 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
13884 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
13885 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
13886 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
13887 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
13888 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
13889 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
13890 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
13891 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
13892 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
13893 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
13894 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
13895 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
13896 sound file.</p>
13897
13898 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
13899 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
13900 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
13901 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
13902 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
13903 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
13904 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
13905 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
13906 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
13907
13908 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13909
13910 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
13911 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
13912 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
13913 )</p>
13914
13915 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13916 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13917
13918 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
13919 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
13920 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
13921 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
13922 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
13923 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
13924 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
13925 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
13926 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
13927 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
13928 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
13929 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
13930 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
13931 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
13932 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
13933
13934 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
13935 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
13936 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
13937 management with Airtime</a>,
13938 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
13939 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
13940 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
13941 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
13942 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
13943
13944       </div>
13945       <div class="tags">
13946
13947
13948         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
13949
13950
13951       </div>
13952     </div>
13953     <div class="padding"></div>
13954
13955     <div class="entry">
13956       <div class="title">
13957         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
13958       </div>
13959       <div class="date">
13960          8th July 2012
13961       </div>
13962       <div class="body">
13963         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
13964 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
13965 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
13966 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
13967 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
13968 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
13969 Steinberg in his blog post
13970 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
13971 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
13972 spending of your tax money.</p>
13973
13974 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
13975 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
13976 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
13977 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
13978 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
13979 purchases.</p>
13980
13981       </div>
13982       <div class="tags">
13983
13984
13985         Tags: <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>.
13986
13987
13988       </div>
13989     </div>
13990     <div class="padding"></div>
13991
13992     <div class="entry">
13993       <div class="title">
13994         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
13995       </div>
13996       <div class="date">
13997          7th July 2012
13998       </div>
13999       <div class="body">
14000         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
14001 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
14002 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
14003 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
14004 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
14005 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
14006 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
14007 receive.  The software is
14008
14009 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
14010 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
14011 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
14012 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
14013 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
14014 Windows</a>.</p>
14015
14016 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
14017 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
14018
14019 <p><ul>
14020
14021   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
14022     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
14023
14024   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
14025     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
14026     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
14027     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
14028     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
14029     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
14030     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
14031     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
14032     </li>
14033
14034   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
14035     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
14036
14037   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
14038     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
14039
14040   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
14041     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
14042
14043   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
14044
14045   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
14046     formats </li>
14047
14048   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
14049     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
14050     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
14051     (as separate sets)</li>
14052
14053   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
14054     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
14055     percentage)</li>
14056
14057   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
14058     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
14059     memory):
14060     <ul>
14061       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
14062       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
14063       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
14064       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
14065       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
14066       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
14067       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
14068       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
14069       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
14070       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
14071           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
14072           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
14073           activity)</li>
14074       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
14075       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
14076     </ul></li>
14077
14078   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
14079     <ul>
14080       <li>Break periods</li>
14081       <li>For teacher(s):
14082         <ul>
14083           <li>Not available periods</li>
14084           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
14085           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
14086           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
14087           <li>Min hours daily</li>
14088           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
14089
14090           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
14091             days per week</li>
14092         </ul></li>
14093       <li>For students (sets):
14094         <ul>
14095           <li>Not available periods</li>
14096           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
14097           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
14098           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
14099           <li>Min hours daily</li>
14100           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
14101
14102           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
14103             days per week</li>
14104         </ul></li>
14105       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
14106         <ul>
14107           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
14108           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
14109           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
14110           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
14111           <li>End(s) students day</li>
14112           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
14113           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
14114             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
14115           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
14116           <li>Not overlapping</li>
14117           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
14118           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
14119         </ul></li>
14120     </ul></li>
14121
14122   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
14123     <ul>
14124       <li>Room not available periods</li>
14125       <li>For teacher(s):
14126         <ul>
14127           <li>Home room(s)</li>
14128           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
14129           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
14130         </ul>
14131       </li>
14132
14133       <li>For students (sets):
14134         <ul>
14135           <li>Home room(s)</li>
14136           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
14137           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
14138         </ul>
14139       </li>
14140       <li>Preferred room(s):
14141         <ul>
14142           <li>For a subject</li>
14143           <li>For an activity tag</li>
14144           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
14145           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
14146         </ul>
14147       </li>
14148
14149       <li>For a set of activities:
14150         <ul>
14151           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
14152         </ul>
14153       </li>
14154     </ul>
14155   </li>
14156 </ul></p>
14157
14158 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
14159 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
14160 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
14161 manually, check it out.
14162
14163 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
14164 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
14165 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
14166 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
14167 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
14168 section</a>.</p>
14169
14170       </div>
14171       <div class="tags">
14172
14173
14174         Tags: <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/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
14175
14176
14177       </div>
14178     </div>
14179     <div class="padding"></div>
14180
14181     <div class="entry">
14182       <div class="title">
14183         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
14184       </div>
14185       <div class="date">
14186          3rd July 2012
14187       </div>
14188       <div class="body">
14189         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
14190 project (Norwegian version of
14191 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
14192 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
14193 a problem with the municipalities using
14194 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
14195 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
14196 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
14197 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
14198 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
14199 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
14200 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
14201 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
14202 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
14203 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
14204 the From: header.</p>
14205
14206 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
14207 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
14208 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
14209 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
14210 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
14211 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
14212 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
14213 behaviour.</p>
14214
14215 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
14216 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
14217 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
14218 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
14219 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
14220 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
14221 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
14222
14223       </div>
14224       <div class="tags">
14225
14226
14227         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</a>.
14228
14229
14230       </div>
14231     </div>
14232     <div class="padding"></div>
14233
14234     <div class="entry">
14235       <div class="title">
14236         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
14237       </div>
14238       <div class="date">
14239         26th June 2012
14240       </div>
14241       <div class="body">
14242         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
14243 another interview with the people behind
14244 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
14245 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
14246 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
14247 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
14248 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
14249 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
14250 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
14251
14252 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14253
14254 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
14255 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
14256 ICT in schools</p>
14257
14258 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14259 project?</strong></p>
14260
14261 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
14262 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
14263 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
14264 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
14265
14266 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14267 Edu?</strong></p>
14268
14269 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
14270 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
14271 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
14272 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
14273
14274 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14275 Edu?</strong></p>
14276
14277 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
14278 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
14279 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
14280 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
14281 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
14282 technologies in school.</p>
14283
14284 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14285
14286 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
14287 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
14288 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
14289
14290 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14291 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14292
14293 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
14294 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
14295 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
14296 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
14297
14298 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
14299 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
14300 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
14301
14302 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
14303 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
14304 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
14305 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
14306 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
14307 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
14308 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
14309 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
14310 working there.</p>
14311
14312       </div>
14313       <div class="tags">
14314
14315
14316         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
14317
14318
14319       </div>
14320     </div>
14321     <div class="padding"></div>
14322
14323     <div class="entry">
14324       <div class="title">
14325         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
14326       </div>
14327       <div class="date">
14328         24th June 2012
14329       </div>
14330       <div class="body">
14331         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
14332 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
14333 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
14334 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
14335 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
14336 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
14337 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
14338 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
14339 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
14340 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
14341 missing in my book.</p>
14342
14343 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
14344 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
14345 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
14346 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
14347 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
14348 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
14349 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
14350
14351       </div>
14352       <div class="tags">
14353
14354
14355         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>.
14356
14357
14358       </div>
14359     </div>
14360     <div class="padding"></div>
14361
14362     <div class="entry">
14363       <div class="title">
14364         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
14365       </div>
14366       <div class="date">
14367         11th June 2012
14368       </div>
14369       <div class="body">
14370         <p>During my work on
14371 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
14372 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
14373 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
14374 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
14375 explanation.</p>
14376
14377 <p><ul>
14378
14379 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
14380 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
14381 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
14382 system depend on tasksel tasks in
14383 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
14384 installation.</li>
14385
14386 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
14387 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
14388 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
14389 at least try to enable it for these services:
14390 <ul>
14391
14392   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
14393     quotas.</li>
14394   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
14395   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
14396   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
14397   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
14398   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
14399
14400 </ul></li>
14401
14402 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
14403 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
14404 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
14405 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
14406
14407 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
14408 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
14409 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
14410
14411 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
14412 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
14413 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
14414 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
14415 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
14416 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
14417
14418 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
14419 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
14420 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
14421 in Wheezy.
14422
14423 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
14424 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
14425 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
14426
14427 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
14428 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
14429 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
14430 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
14431
14432 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
14433 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
14434 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
14435 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
14436
14437 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
14438 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
14439 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
14440
14441 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
14442 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
14443 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
14444
14445 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
14446 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
14447 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
14448 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
14449 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
14450
14451 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
14452 <ul>
14453
14454 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
14455 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
14456 <li>and probably more?</li>
14457 </ul></li>
14458
14459 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
14460 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
14461 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
14462 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
14463 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
14464 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
14465 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
14466 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
14467
14468
14469 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
14470 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
14471 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
14472 use.</li>
14473
14474 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
14475 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
14476 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
14477 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
14478 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
14479
14480 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
14481 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
14482 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
14483 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
14484 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
14485 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
14486
14487 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
14488 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
14489 There are at least three implementations,
14490 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
14491 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
14492 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
14493 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
14494 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
14495 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
14496 given room.</li>
14497
14498 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
14499 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
14500 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
14501 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
14502 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
14503 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
14504 investigated.</li>
14505
14506 </ul></p>
14507
14508 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
14509 version.</p>
14510
14511       </div>
14512       <div class="tags">
14513
14514
14515         Tags: <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>.
14516
14517
14518       </div>
14519     </div>
14520     <div class="padding"></div>
14521
14522     <div class="entry">
14523       <div class="title">
14524         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
14525       </div>
14526       <div class="date">
14527          9th June 2012
14528       </div>
14529       <div class="body">
14530         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
14531 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
14532 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
14533 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
14534 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
14535 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
14536 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
14537 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
14538 be willing to pay for.</p>
14539
14540 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
14541 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
14542 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
14543 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
14544 Orwell</a>.</p>
14545
14546       </div>
14547       <div class="tags">
14548
14549
14550         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
14551
14552
14553       </div>
14554     </div>
14555     <div class="padding"></div>
14556
14557     <div class="entry">
14558       <div class="title">
14559         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
14560       </div>
14561       <div class="date">
14562          6th June 2012
14563       </div>
14564       <div class="body">
14565         <p>A few days ago
14566 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
14567 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
14568 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
14569 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
14570 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
14571 code for HP, Dell and IBM
14572 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
14573 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
14574 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
14575 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
14576 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
14577
14578 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
14579 output:
14580
14581 <blockquote><pre>
14582 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
14583 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
14584 %
14585 </pre></blockquote>
14586
14587 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
14588 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
14589 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
14590
14591       </div>
14592       <div class="tags">
14593
14594
14595         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14596
14597
14598       </div>
14599     </div>
14600     <div class="padding"></div>
14601
14602     <div class="entry">
14603       <div class="title">
14604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
14605       </div>
14606       <div class="date">
14607          2nd June 2012
14608       </div>
14609       <div class="body">
14610         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
14611 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
14612 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
14613 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
14614 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
14615 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
14616
14617 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14618
14619 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
14620 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
14621 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
14622 by Angela).</p>
14623
14624 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
14625 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
14626 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
14627 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
14628 becoming an osteopath.</p>
14629
14630 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
14631 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
14632 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
14633 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
14634 skills with communication skills.</p>
14635
14636 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14637 project?</strong></p>
14638
14639 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
14640 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
14641 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
14642 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
14643 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
14644
14645 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
14646 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
14647 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
14648 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
14649 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
14650 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
14651 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
14652 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
14653 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
14654
14655 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
14656 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
14657 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
14658
14659 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
14660
14661 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
14662 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
14663 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
14664 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
14665 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
14666 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
14667 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
14668 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
14669 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
14670 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
14671 point.</p>
14672
14673 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
14674 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
14675 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
14676 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
14677 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
14678 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
14679
14680 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
14681 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
14682 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
14683 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
14684 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
14685 spare time.</p>
14686
14687 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
14688 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
14689 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
14690 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
14691 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
14692
14693 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
14694 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
14695 avoidance do exist.</p>
14696
14697 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
14698 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
14699 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
14700 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
14701 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
14702 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
14703 and probably a gain for all.</p>
14704
14705 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14706 Edu?</strong></p>
14707
14708 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
14709 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
14710 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
14711 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
14712 project communication, honest communication within the group of
14713 developers, etc.</p>
14714
14715 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14716 Edu?</strong></p>
14717
14718 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
14719
14720 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
14721 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
14722 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
14723 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
14724 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
14725 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
14726 contribute).</p>
14727
14728 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
14729 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
14730 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
14731 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
14732 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
14733 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
14734 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
14735 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
14736 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
14737 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
14738
14739 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14740
14741 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
14742
14743 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
14744 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
14745 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
14746
14747 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
14748 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
14749 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
14750 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
14751
14752 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
14753 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
14754 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
14755 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
14756 whiteboard.</p>
14757
14758 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
14759
14760 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14761 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14762
14763 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
14764 enrol people.</p>
14765
14766       </div>
14767       <div class="tags">
14768
14769
14770         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
14771
14772
14773       </div>
14774     </div>
14775     <div class="padding"></div>
14776
14777     <div class="entry">
14778       <div class="title">
14779         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
14780       </div>
14781       <div class="date">
14782          1st June 2012
14783       </div>
14784       <div class="body">
14785         <p>A few years ago I wrote
14786 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
14787 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
14788 I have learned from colleges here at the
14789 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
14790 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
14791 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
14792 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
14793 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
14794
14795 <p><pre>
14796 use strict;
14797 use warnings;
14798 use SOAP::Lite;
14799 use Data::Dumper;
14800 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
14801 my $App = 'test';
14802 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
14803 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
14804 my $s = SOAP::Lite
14805     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
14806     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
14807     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
14808     ;
14809 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
14810     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
14811     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
14812     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
14813 );
14814 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
14815 </pre></p>
14816
14817 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
14818
14819 <p><pre>
14820 $VAR1 = {
14821           'Asset' => {
14822                      'Entitlements' => {
14823                                        'EntitlementData' => [
14824                                                             {
14825                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
14826                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
14827                                                               'Provider' => '',
14828                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
14829                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
14830                                                             },
14831                                                             {
14832                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
14833                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
14834                                                               'Provider' => '',
14835                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
14836                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
14837                                                             },
14838                                                             {
14839                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
14840                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
14841                                                               'Provider' => '',
14842                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
14843                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
14844                                                             }
14845                                                           ]
14846                                      },
14847                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
14848                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
14849                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
14850                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
14851                                           'Buid' => '2323',
14852                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
14853                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
14854                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
14855                                         }
14856                    }
14857         };
14858 </pre></p>
14859
14860 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
14861 service outside the
14862 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
14863 documentation</a>, and according to
14864 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
14865 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
14866 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
14867
14868 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
14869 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
14870
14871       </div>
14872       <div class="tags">
14873
14874
14875         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
14876
14877
14878       </div>
14879     </div>
14880     <div class="padding"></div>
14881
14882     <div class="entry">
14883       <div class="title">
14884         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
14885       </div>
14886       <div class="date">
14887         31st May 2012
14888       </div>
14889       <div class="body">
14890         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
14891 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
14892 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
14893 running Debian Squeeze, where
14894 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
14895 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
14896 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
14897 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
14898 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
14899 another day.</p>
14900
14901 <p>After calibration, I get a
14902 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
14903 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
14904 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
14905 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
14906 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
14907 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
14908 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
14909 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
14910 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
14911 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
14912 and a simple</p>
14913
14914 <p><pre>
14915 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
14916 </pre></p>
14917
14918 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
14919 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
14920 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
14921 enough for now.</p>
14922
14923       </div>
14924       <div class="tags">
14925
14926
14927         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14928
14929
14930       </div>
14931     </div>
14932     <div class="padding"></div>
14933
14934     <div class="entry">
14935       <div class="title">
14936         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
14937       </div>
14938       <div class="date">
14939         27th May 2012
14940       </div>
14941       <div class="body">
14942         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
14943 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
14944 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
14945 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
14946 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
14947 since then, helping to make sure the
14948 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
14949 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
14950
14951 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14952
14953 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
14954 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
14955 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
14956 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
14957 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
14958 our computer network.</p>
14959
14960 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
14961 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
14962 (4 months).</p>
14963
14964 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14965 project?</strong></p>
14966
14967 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
14968 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
14969 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
14970 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
14971 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
14972 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
14973 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
14974 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
14975 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
14976 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
14977 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
14978 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
14979 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
14980 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
14981
14982 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14983 Edu?</strong></p>
14984
14985 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
14986 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
14987 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
14988 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
14989 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
14990 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
14991 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
14992 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
14993
14994 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14995 Edu?</strong></p>
14996
14997 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
14998 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
14999 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
15000 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
15001 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
15002 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
15003 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
15004 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
15005 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
15006 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
15007 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
15008 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
15009
15010 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15011
15012 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
15013 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
15014 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
15015
15016 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15017 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15018
15019 <p><ol>
15020
15021 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
15022 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
15023 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
15024 developing.</li>
15025
15026 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
15027 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
15028 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
15029 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
15030 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
15031
15032 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
15033 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
15034 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
15035
15036 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
15037 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
15038 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
15039 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
15040
15041 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
15042 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
15043 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
15044
15045 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
15046
15047 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
15048 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
15049 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
15050 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
15051
15052 </ol></p>
15053
15054       </div>
15055       <div class="tags">
15056
15057
15058         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
15059
15060
15061       </div>
15062     </div>
15063     <div class="padding"></div>
15064
15065     <div class="entry">
15066       <div class="title">
15067         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
15068       </div>
15069       <div class="date">
15070         26th May 2012
15071       </div>
15072       <div class="body">
15073         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
15074 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
15075 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
15076 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
15077 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
15078
15079 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
15080 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
15081 comment:</p>
15082
15083 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
15084 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
15085 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
15086 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
15087 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
15088 </blockquote></p>
15089
15090 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
15091 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
15092 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
15093 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
15094 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
15095 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
15096 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
15097 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
15098 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
15099 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
15100 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
15101 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
15102 of wasted effort.</p>
15103
15104 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
15105 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
15106 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
15107
15108 <p>See
15109 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
15110 and
15111 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
15112 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
15113 </blockquote></p>
15114
15115       </div>
15116       <div class="tags">
15117
15118
15119         Tags: <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>.
15120
15121
15122       </div>
15123     </div>
15124     <div class="padding"></div>
15125
15126     <div class="entry">
15127       <div class="title">
15128         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
15129       </div>
15130       <div class="date">
15131         18th May 2012
15132       </div>
15133       <div class="body">
15134         <p>In january, I
15135 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
15136 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
15137 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
15138 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
15139 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
15140 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
15141 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
15142 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
15143 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
15144 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
15145
15146 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
15147 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
15148 drivers. :)</p>
15149
15150       </div>
15151       <div class="tags">
15152
15153
15154         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15155
15156
15157       </div>
15158     </div>
15159     <div class="padding"></div>
15160
15161     <div class="entry">
15162       <div class="title">
15163         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
15164       </div>
15165       <div class="date">
15166         13th May 2012
15167       </div>
15168       <div class="body">
15169         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
15170 publish another interview with the people behind
15171 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
15172 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
15173 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
15174 details get right before release.
15175
15176 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
15177
15178 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
15179 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
15180 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
15181 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
15182 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
15183 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
15184 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
15185 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
15186
15187 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
15188 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
15189 home since 2006.</p>
15190
15191 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
15192 project?</strong></p>
15193
15194 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
15195 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
15196 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
15197 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
15198 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
15199 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
15200
15201 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
15202 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
15203 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
15204 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
15205 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
15206 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
15207 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
15208 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
15209 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
15210 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
15211 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
15212 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
15213 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
15214 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
15215 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
15216 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
15217
15218 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15219 Edu?</strong></p>
15220
15221 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
15222 for me as today.</p>
15223
15224 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
15225
15226 <p><ul>
15227
15228 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
15229 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
15230
15231 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
15232 cost.</li>
15233
15234 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
15235 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
15236 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
15237 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
15238 server</li>
15239
15240 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
15241 school.</li>
15242
15243 </ul></p>
15244
15245 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
15246 came up in this way:</p>
15247
15248 <p><ul>
15249
15250 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
15251 now.</li>
15252
15253 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
15254 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
15255 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
15256
15257 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
15258 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
15259 interfaces used in the past.</li>
15260
15261 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
15262 different needs.</li>
15263
15264 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
15265
15266 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
15267 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
15268 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
15269
15270 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
15271 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
15272
15273 </ul></p>
15274
15275 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15276 Edu?</strong></p>
15277
15278 <p><ul>
15279
15280 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
15281 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
15282 whole municipality areas.</li>
15283
15284 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
15285 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
15286 politicians.</li>
15287
15288 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
15289
15290 </ul></p>
15291
15292 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15293
15294 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
15295 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
15296 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
15297 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
15298 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
15299 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
15300
15301 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
15302 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
15303 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
15304 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
15305 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
15306
15307 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15308 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15309
15310 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
15311 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
15312 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
15313
15314       </div>
15315       <div class="tags">
15316
15317
15318         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
15319
15320
15321       </div>
15322     </div>
15323     <div class="padding"></div>
15324
15325     <div class="entry">
15326       <div class="title">
15327         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
15328       </div>
15329       <div class="date">
15330         30th April 2012
15331       </div>
15332       <div class="body">
15333         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
15334 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
15335
15336 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
15337 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
15338 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
15339 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
15340 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
15341 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
15342 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
15343 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
15344 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
15345 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
15346 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
15347 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
15348 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
15349 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
15350 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
15351 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
15352
15353 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
15354 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
15355 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
15356 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
15357 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
15358 finally found a Danish supplier
15359 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
15360 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
15361 days ago.</p>
15362
15363 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
15364 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
15365 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
15366 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
15367 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
15368 toys.</p>
15369
15370       </div>
15371       <div class="tags">
15372
15373
15374         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15375
15376
15377       </div>
15378     </div>
15379     <div class="padding"></div>
15380
15381     <div class="entry">
15382       <div class="title">
15383         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
15384       </div>
15385       <div class="date">
15386         26th April 2012
15387       </div>
15388       <div class="body">
15389         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
15390 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
15391 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
15392 that the video editor application included with
15393 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
15394 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
15395 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
15396
15397 <p><blockquote>
15398 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
15399 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
15400 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
15401 </blockquote></p>
15402
15403 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
15404
15405 <p><blockquote>
15406 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
15407 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
15408 </blockquote></p>
15409
15410 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
15411 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
15412 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
15413 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
15414 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
15415 video.  AMR is
15416 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
15417 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
15418 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
15419 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
15420 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
15421 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
15422 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
15423
15424 <p>I know why I prefer
15425 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
15426 standards</a> also for video.</p>
15427
15428       </div>
15429       <div class="tags">
15430
15431
15432         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</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>.
15433
15434
15435       </div>
15436     </div>
15437     <div class="padding"></div>
15438
15439     <div class="entry">
15440       <div class="title">
15441         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
15442       </div>
15443       <div class="date">
15444         19th April 2012
15445       </div>
15446       <div class="body">
15447         <p>Here in Norway, the
15448 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
15449 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
15450 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
15451 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
15452 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
15453 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
15454 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
15455 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
15456 on the same level.</p>
15457
15458 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
15459 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
15460 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
15461 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
15462 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
15463 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
15464 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
15465 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
15466 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
15467 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
15468 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
15469 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
15470 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
15471 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
15472 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
15473 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
15474 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
15475 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
15476
15477 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
15478 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
15479 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
15480 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
15481 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
15482 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
15483 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
15484 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
15485
15486 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
15487 from Simon Phipps
15488 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
15489 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
15490
15491 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
15492 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
15493 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
15494 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
15495 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
15496 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
15497 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
15498 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
15499 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
15500
15501       </div>
15502       <div class="tags">
15503
15504
15505         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
15506
15507
15508       </div>
15509     </div>
15510     <div class="padding"></div>
15511
15512     <div class="entry">
15513       <div class="title">
15514         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
15515       </div>
15516       <div class="date">
15517         15th April 2012
15518       </div>
15519       <div class="body">
15520         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
15521 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
15522 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
15523 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
15524 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
15525 up in the recently released
15526 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
15527 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
15528
15529 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
15530
15531 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
15532 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
15533 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
15534 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
15535 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
15536 information technology and science/technology.</p>
15537
15538 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
15539 project?</strong></p>
15540
15541 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
15542 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
15543 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
15544 contributing.</p>
15545
15546 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15547 Edu?</strong></p>
15548
15549 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
15550 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
15551 Debian Project!</p>
15552
15553 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15554 Edu?</strong></p>
15555
15556 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
15557 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
15558 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
15559 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
15560 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
15561 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
15562 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
15563
15564 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
15565 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
15566
15567 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15568
15569 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
15570 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
15571 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
15572 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
15573
15574 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15575 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15576
15577 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
15578 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
15579 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
15580 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
15581 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
15582 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
15583 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
15584
15585 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
15586 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
15587 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
15588 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
15589 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
15590 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
15591 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
15592 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
15593
15594       </div>
15595       <div class="tags">
15596
15597
15598         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
15599
15600
15601       </div>
15602     </div>
15603     <div class="padding"></div>
15604
15605     <div class="entry">
15606       <div class="title">
15607         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
15608       </div>
15609       <div class="date">
15610          8th April 2012
15611       </div>
15612       <div class="body">
15613         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
15614 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
15615 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
15616 contributor to the
15617 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
15618 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
15619
15620 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
15621
15622 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
15623 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
15624
15625 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
15626 project?</strong></p>
15627
15628 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
15629 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
15630 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
15631 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
15632 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
15633 "localisation".</p>
15634
15635 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15636 Edu?</strong></p>
15637
15638 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15639 Edu?</strong></p>
15640
15641 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
15642 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
15643 education system.</p>
15644
15645 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
15646 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
15647 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
15648 money on the latest hardware.</p>
15649
15650 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15651
15652 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
15653 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
15654 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
15655
15656 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15657 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15658
15659 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
15660 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
15661 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
15662
15663       </div>
15664       <div class="tags">
15665
15666
15667         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
15668
15669
15670       </div>
15671     </div>
15672     <div class="padding"></div>
15673
15674     <div class="entry">
15675       <div class="title">
15676         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
15677       </div>
15678       <div class="date">
15679          6th April 2012
15680       </div>
15681       <div class="body">
15682         <p>Recently I have spent time with
15683 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
15684 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
15685 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
15686 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
15687 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
15688 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
15689 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
15690 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
15691
15692 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
15693 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
15694 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
15695 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
15696 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
15697 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
15698 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
15699 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
15700
15701 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
15702 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
15703 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
15704 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
15705 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
15706 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
15707 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
15708 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
15709
15710 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
15711 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
15712 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
15713 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
15714 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
15715 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
15716 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
15717 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
15718 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
15719 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
15720
15721 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
15722 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
15723 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
15724 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
15725
15726 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
15727 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
15728
15729 <p>Update 2015-08-04: The
15730 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/">source
15731 of the scripts and associated Debian package</a> is available from the
15732 Debian Edu github repository.</p>
15733
15734       </div>
15735       <div class="tags">
15736
15737
15738         Tags: <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>.
15739
15740
15741       </div>
15742     </div>
15743     <div class="padding"></div>
15744
15745     <div class="entry">
15746       <div class="title">
15747         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
15748       </div>
15749       <div class="date">
15750          5th April 2012
15751       </div>
15752       <div class="body">
15753         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
15754 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
15755 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
15756 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
15757 for schools.  Check out his article
15758 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
15759 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
15760
15761       </div>
15762       <div class="tags">
15763
15764
15765         Tags: <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>.
15766
15767
15768       </div>
15769     </div>
15770     <div class="padding"></div>
15771
15772     <div class="entry">
15773       <div class="title">
15774         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
15775       </div>
15776       <div class="date">
15777          1st April 2012
15778       </div>
15779       <div class="body">
15780         <p>Germany is a core area for the
15781 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
15782 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
15783 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
15784
15785 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
15786
15787 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
15788 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
15789 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
15790 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
15791 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
15792 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
15793 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
15794 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
15795
15796 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
15797 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
15798 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
15799 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
15800 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
15801 the end of April this year.</p>
15802
15803 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
15804 project?</strong></p>
15805
15806 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
15807 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
15808 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
15809 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
15810 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
15811 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
15812 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
15813 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
15814 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
15815 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
15816 Skolelinux.</p>
15817
15818 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
15819 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
15820 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
15821 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
15822 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
15823 the admin teachers.</p>
15824
15825 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15826 Edu?</strong></p>
15827
15828 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
15829 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
15830 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
15831
15832 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
15833 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
15834 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
15835 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
15836 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
15837
15838 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15839 Edu?</strong></p>
15840
15841 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
15842
15843 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15844
15845 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
15846 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
15847 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
15848 LibreOffice.</p>
15849
15850 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15851 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15852
15853 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
15854 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
15855 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
15856
15857       </div>
15858       <div class="tags">
15859
15860
15861         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
15862
15863
15864       </div>
15865     </div>
15866     <div class="padding"></div>
15867
15868     <div class="entry">
15869       <div class="title">
15870         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
15871       </div>
15872       <div class="date">
15873         25th March 2012
15874       </div>
15875       <div class="body">
15876         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
15877
15878 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
15879 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
15880 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
15881 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
15882 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
15883 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
15884 and download as a
15885 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
15886 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
15887
15888 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
15889   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
15890     <p>Download video as
15891       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
15892 </video></p>
15893
15894       </div>
15895       <div class="tags">
15896
15897
15898         Tags: <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>.
15899
15900
15901       </div>
15902     </div>
15903     <div class="padding"></div>
15904
15905     <div class="entry">
15906       <div class="title">
15907         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
15908       </div>
15909       <div class="date">
15910         19th March 2012
15911       </div>
15912       <div class="body">
15913         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
15914 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
15915 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
15916 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
15917 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
15918
15919 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
15920
15921 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
15922 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
15923 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
15924 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
15925 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
15926 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
15927 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
15928 installations.</p>
15929
15930 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
15931 project?</strong></p>
15932
15933 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
15934 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
15935 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
15936 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
15937 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
15938 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
15939 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
15940 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
15941 these things we decided to try it.</p>
15942
15943 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15944 Edu?</strong></p>
15945
15946 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
15947 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
15948 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
15949 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
15950 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
15951 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
15952 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
15953 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
15954
15955 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15956 Edu?</strong></p>
15957
15958 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
15959 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
15960 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
15961 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
15962 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
15963
15964 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15965
15966 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
15967 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
15968 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
15969 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
15970 that counts...)</p>
15971
15972 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15973 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15974
15975 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
15976 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
15977 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
15978 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
15979 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
15980 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
15981 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
15982 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
15983 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
15984 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
15985 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
15986
15987 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
15988 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
15989 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
15990
15991       </div>
15992       <div class="tags">
15993
15994
15995         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
15996
15997
15998       </div>
15999     </div>
16000     <div class="padding"></div>
16001
16002     <div class="entry">
16003       <div class="title">
16004         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
16005       </div>
16006       <div class="date">
16007         16th March 2012
16008       </div>
16009       <div class="body">
16010         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
16011 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
16012 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
16013 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
16014
16015 <ol>
16016
16017 <li>The documentation is written in a
16018 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
16019 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
16020 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
16021 docbook XML.</li>
16022
16023 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
16024 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
16025 with the translated text.</li>
16026
16027 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
16028 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
16029 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
16030 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
16031 images.</li>
16032
16033 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
16034 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
16035
16036 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
16037 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
16038
16039 </ol>
16040
16041 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
16042 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
16043 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
16044 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
16045 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
16046
16047 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
16048 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
16049 package</a>.</p>
16050
16051       </div>
16052       <div class="tags">
16053
16054
16055         Tags: <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>.
16056
16057
16058       </div>
16059     </div>
16060     <div class="padding"></div>
16061
16062     <div class="entry">
16063       <div class="title">
16064         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
16065       </div>
16066       <div class="date">
16067         11th March 2012
16068       </div>
16069       <div class="body">
16070         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
16071 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
16072 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
16073 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
16074 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
16075 you have not done so already.</p>
16076
16077 <p>I plan to present the new version at
16078 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
16079 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
16080 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
16081
16082       </div>
16083       <div class="tags">
16084
16085
16086         Tags: <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>.
16087
16088
16089       </div>
16090     </div>
16091     <div class="padding"></div>
16092
16093     <div class="entry">
16094       <div class="title">
16095         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
16096       </div>
16097       <div class="date">
16098          9th March 2012
16099       </div>
16100       <div class="body">
16101         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
16102 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
16103 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
16104 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
16105 more international audience.</p>
16106
16107 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
16108 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
16109 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
16110 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
16111 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
16112 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
16113 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
16114
16115
16116 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
16117
16118 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
16119 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
16120 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
16121 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
16122 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
16123 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
16124 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
16125 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
16126 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
16127 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
16128 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
16129
16130 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
16131 project?</strong></p>
16132
16133 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
16134 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
16135 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
16136 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
16137 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
16138 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
16139 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
16140 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
16141 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
16142 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
16143 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
16144 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
16145 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
16146
16147 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
16148 Edu?</strong></p>
16149
16150 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
16151 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
16152 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
16153 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
16154 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
16155 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
16156 Japan.</p>
16157
16158 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
16159 Edu?</strong></p>
16160
16161 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
16162 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
16163 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
16164 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
16165 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
16166 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
16167 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
16168 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
16169 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
16170 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
16171 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
16172 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
16173 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
16174 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
16175 help.</p>
16176
16177 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
16178
16179 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
16180 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
16181 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
16182 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
16183 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
16184 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
16185 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
16186 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
16187 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
16188 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
16189 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
16190
16191 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
16192 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
16193
16194 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
16195 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
16196 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
16197 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
16198 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
16199 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
16200 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
16201 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
16202 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
16203 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
16204 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
16205 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
16206
16207       </div>
16208       <div class="tags">
16209
16210
16211         Tags: <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/intervju">intervju</a>.
16212
16213
16214       </div>
16215     </div>
16216     <div class="padding"></div>
16217
16218     <div class="entry">
16219       <div class="title">
16220         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
16221       </div>
16222       <div class="date">
16223          7th March 2012
16224       </div>
16225       <div class="body">
16226         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
16227
16228 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
16229 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
16230 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
16231 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
16232 download as a
16233 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
16234 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
16235
16236 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
16237   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
16238     <p>Download video as
16239       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
16240 </video></p>
16241
16242       </div>
16243       <div class="tags">
16244
16245
16246         Tags: <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>.
16247
16248
16249       </div>
16250     </div>
16251     <div class="padding"></div>
16252
16253     <div class="entry">
16254       <div class="title">
16255         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
16256       </div>
16257       <div class="date">
16258          4th March 2012
16259       </div>
16260       <div class="body">
16261         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
16262 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
16263 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
16264 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
16265 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
16266 need a software solution for your school.</p>
16267
16268       </div>
16269       <div class="tags">
16270
16271
16272         Tags: <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>.
16273
16274
16275       </div>
16276     </div>
16277     <div class="padding"></div>
16278
16279     <div class="entry">
16280       <div class="title">
16281         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
16282       </div>
16283       <div class="date">
16284          3rd March 2012
16285       </div>
16286       <div class="body">
16287         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
16288 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
16289 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
16290 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
16291 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
16292 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
16293 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
16294 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
16295 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
16296 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
16297 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
16298 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
16299 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
16300 year...</p>
16301
16302 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
16303 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
16304 name,
16305 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
16306 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
16307 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
16308 mean). I've been following
16309 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
16310 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
16311 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
16312 Check it out. :)</p>
16313
16314       </div>
16315       <div class="tags">
16316
16317
16318         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
16319
16320
16321       </div>
16322     </div>
16323     <div class="padding"></div>
16324
16325     <div class="entry">
16326       <div class="title">
16327         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
16328       </div>
16329       <div class="date">
16330         27th February 2012
16331       </div>
16332       <div class="body">
16333         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
16334 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
16335 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
16336 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
16337 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
16338 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
16339 need a software solution for your school.</p>
16340
16341       </div>
16342       <div class="tags">
16343
16344
16345         Tags: <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>.
16346
16347
16348       </div>
16349     </div>
16350     <div class="padding"></div>
16351
16352     <div class="entry">
16353       <div class="title">
16354         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
16355       </div>
16356       <div class="date">
16357         19th February 2012
16358       </div>
16359       <div class="body">
16360         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
16361 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
16362 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
16363 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
16364 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
16365 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
16366 solution for your school.</p>
16367
16368       </div>
16369       <div class="tags">
16370
16371
16372         Tags: <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>.
16373
16374
16375       </div>
16376     </div>
16377     <div class="padding"></div>
16378
16379     <div class="entry">
16380       <div class="title">
16381         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
16382       </div>
16383       <div class="date">
16384         14th February 2012
16385       </div>
16386       <div class="body">
16387         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
16388 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
16389 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
16390 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
16391 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
16392 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
16393 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
16394 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
16395 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
16396
16397 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
16398 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
16399 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
16400 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
16401 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
16402
16403 <blockquote><pre>
16404 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
16405 do
16406     printf "Failed disk $d: "
16407     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
16408 done
16409 </blockquote></pre>
16410
16411 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
16412 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
16413
16414 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
16415
16416 <blockquote><pre>
16417 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
16418 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
16419 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
16420 </blockquote></pre>
16421
16422 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
16423 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
16424 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
16425 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
16426 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
16427 mounted inside my box.</p>
16428
16429 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
16430 Software RAID in the
16431 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
16432 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
16433 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
16434 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
16435 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
16436 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
16437
16438       </div>
16439       <div class="tags">
16440
16441
16442         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
16443
16444
16445       </div>
16446     </div>
16447     <div class="padding"></div>
16448
16449     <div class="entry">
16450       <div class="title">
16451         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
16452       </div>
16453       <div class="date">
16454         13th February 2012
16455       </div>
16456       <div class="body">
16457         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
16458 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
16459 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
16460 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
16461 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
16462 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
16463 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
16464 change the global proxy setting by editing
16465 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
16466 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
16467
16468 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
16469 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
16470 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
16471
16472 <blockquote><pre>
16473 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
16474 {
16475    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
16476        isPlainHostName(host) ||
16477        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
16478       return "DIRECT";
16479    else
16480       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
16481 }
16482 </pre></blockquote>
16483
16484 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
16485
16486 <blockquote><pre>
16487 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
16488 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
16489 </pre></blockquote>
16490
16491 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
16492 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
16493 would be used for
16494 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
16495 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
16496 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
16497 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
16498 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
16499 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
16500 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
16501 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
16502 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
16503 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
16504
16505 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
16506 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
16507 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
16508 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
16509 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
16510 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
16511
16512 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
16513 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
16514 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
16515 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
16516 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
16517 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
16518 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
16519 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
16520 the network setup changes.</p>
16521
16522 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
16523 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
16524 draft</a> and a
16525 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
16526 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
16527
16528       </div>
16529       <div class="tags">
16530
16531
16532         Tags: <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>.
16533
16534
16535       </div>
16536     </div>
16537     <div class="padding"></div>
16538
16539     <div class="entry">
16540       <div class="title">
16541         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
16542       </div>
16543       <div class="date">
16544          5th February 2012
16545       </div>
16546       <div class="body">
16547         <p>Since the Lenny version of
16548 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
16549 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
16550 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
16551 in the morning.  This is done using the
16552 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
16553
16554 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
16555 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
16556 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
16557 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
16558 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
16559 the
16560 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
16561 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
16562 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
16563 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
16564 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
16565
16566 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
16567 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
16568 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
16569 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
16570 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
16571 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
16572 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
16573
16574 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
16575 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
16576 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
16577 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
16578 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
16579
16580       </div>
16581       <div class="tags">
16582
16583
16584         Tags: <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>.
16585
16586
16587       </div>
16588     </div>
16589     <div class="padding"></div>
16590
16591     <div class="entry">
16592       <div class="title">
16593         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
16594       </div>
16595       <div class="date">
16596          4th February 2012
16597       </div>
16598       <div class="body">
16599         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
16600 publish the third beta version of
16601 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
16602 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
16603 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
16604 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
16605 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
16606 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
16607 on the project announcement list.</p>
16608
16609 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
16610 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
16611
16612 <ul>
16613
16614 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
16615   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
16616   the installation.</li>
16617
16618 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
16619   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
16620
16621 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
16622   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
16623   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
16624
16625 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
16626   for the local system administrator is created during installation
16627   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
16628   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
16629   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
16630   up to date on the system.</li>
16631
16632 </ul>
16633
16634 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
16635 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
16636 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
16637 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
16638
16639 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
16640 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
16641 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
16642 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
16643 will see you there?</p>
16644
16645       </div>
16646       <div class="tags">
16647
16648
16649         Tags: <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>.
16650
16651
16652       </div>
16653     </div>
16654     <div class="padding"></div>
16655
16656     <div class="entry">
16657       <div class="title">
16658         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
16659       </div>
16660       <div class="date">
16661         27th January 2012
16662       </div>
16663       <div class="body">
16664         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
16665 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
16666 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
16667 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
16668 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
16669 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
16670 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
16671
16672 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
16673 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
16674 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
16675 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
16676 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
16677 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
16678 not taken care of by this.</p>
16679
16680 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
16681 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
16682 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
16683 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
16684 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
16685 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
16686 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
16687 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
16688 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
16689 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
16690 firmware packages.</p>
16691
16692 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
16693 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
16694 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
16695 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
16696 initrd with extra firmware, the
16697 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
16698 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
16699 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
16700
16701 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
16702 network cards working.  For this,
16703 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
16704 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
16705 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
16706
16707 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
16708 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
16709 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
16710
16711 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
16712 try.</p>
16713
16714       </div>
16715       <div class="tags">
16716
16717
16718         Tags: <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>.
16719
16720
16721       </div>
16722     </div>
16723     <div class="padding"></div>
16724
16725     <div class="entry">
16726       <div class="title">
16727         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
16728       </div>
16729       <div class="date">
16730         25th January 2012
16731       </div>
16732       <div class="body">
16733         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
16734 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
16735 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
16736 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
16737 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
16738
16739 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
16740 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
16741 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
16742 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
16743 this is done, log on to the central server and run
16744 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
16745 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
16746 will look similar to this:</p>
16747
16748 <p><blockquote><pre>
16749 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
16750 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
16751 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
16752
16753 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
16754
16755 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
16756 enter password: *******
16757 %
16758 </pre></blockquote></p>
16759
16760 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
16761 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
16762 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
16763 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
16764 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
16765 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
16766 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
16767 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
16768 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
16769 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
16770 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
16771 automatically.</p>
16772
16773 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
16774 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
16775
16776 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
16777 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
16778 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
16779
16780       </div>
16781       <div class="tags">
16782
16783
16784         Tags: <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>.
16785
16786
16787       </div>
16788     </div>
16789     <div class="padding"></div>
16790
16791     <div class="entry">
16792       <div class="title">
16793         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
16794       </div>
16795       <div class="date">
16796         10th January 2012
16797       </div>
16798       <div class="body">
16799         <p>In the Squeeze version of
16800 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
16801 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
16802 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
16803 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
16804 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
16805 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
16806 first time.</p>
16807
16808 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
16809 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
16810 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
16811 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
16812
16813 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
16814 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
16815 new setting.</p>
16816
16817 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
16818 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
16819 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
16820
16821       </div>
16822       <div class="tags">
16823
16824
16825         Tags: <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/web">web</a>.
16826
16827
16828       </div>
16829     </div>
16830     <div class="padding"></div>
16831
16832     <div class="entry">
16833       <div class="title">
16834         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
16835       </div>
16836       <div class="date">
16837          7th January 2012
16838       </div>
16839       <div class="body">
16840         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
16841 the second beta version of
16842 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
16843 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
16844 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
16845 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
16846 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
16847 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
16848 on the project announcement list.</p>
16849
16850       </div>
16851       <div class="tags">
16852
16853
16854         Tags: <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>.
16855
16856
16857       </div>
16858     </div>
16859     <div class="padding"></div>
16860
16861     <div class="entry">
16862       <div class="title">
16863         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
16864       </div>
16865       <div class="date">
16866          3rd January 2012
16867       </div>
16868       <div class="body">
16869         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
16870 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
16871 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
16872 interesting.</p>
16873
16874 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
16875 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
16876 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
16877 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
16878 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
16879 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
16880 wrap up its tasks.</p>
16881
16882 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
16883 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
16884 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
16885 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
16886 because I was typing.</P>
16887
16888 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
16889 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
16890 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
16891 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
16892 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
16893 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
16894 generate entropy.</p>
16895
16896 <p>The fix is in
16897 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
16898 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
16899 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
16900 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
16901
16902       </div>
16903       <div class="tags">
16904
16905
16906         Tags: <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>.
16907
16908
16909       </div>
16910     </div>
16911     <div class="padding"></div>
16912
16913     <div class="entry">
16914       <div class="title">
16915         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
16916       </div>
16917       <div class="date">
16918         21st November 2011
16919       </div>
16920       <div class="body">
16921         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
16922 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
16923 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
16924 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
16925 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
16926 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
16927 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
16928 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
16929 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
16930 the tools to do so.</p>
16931
16932 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
16933 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
16934 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
16935 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
16936
16937 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
16938 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
16939 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
16940 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
16941 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
16942 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
16943 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
16944 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
16945
16946 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
16947 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
16948 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
16949
16950 <p><pre>
16951 #!/usr/bin/perl
16952 use strict;
16953 use warnings;
16954 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
16955 BEGIN {
16956     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
16957     my %rhelmodules = (
16958         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
16959         );
16960     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
16961         eval "use $module;";
16962         if ($@) {
16963             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
16964             system("yum install -y $pkg");
16965             eval "use $module;";
16966         }
16967     }
16968 }
16969 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
16970
16971 upgrade_dell();
16972
16973 exit 0;
16974
16975 sub run_firmware_script {
16976     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
16977     unless ($script) {
16978         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
16979         exit 1
16980     }
16981     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
16982
16983     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
16984         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
16985     } else {
16986         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
16987     }
16988 }
16989
16990 sub run_firmware_scripts {
16991     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
16992     # Run firmware packages
16993     for my $dir (@dirs) {
16994         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
16995         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
16996         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
16997             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
16998             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
16999         }
17000         closedir $dh;
17001     }
17002 }
17003
17004 sub download {
17005     my $url = shift;
17006     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
17007     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
17008 }
17009
17010 sub upgrade_dell {
17011     my @dirs;
17012     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
17013     chomp $product;
17014
17015     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
17016
17017         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
17018         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
17019
17020         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
17021             CLEANUP => 1
17022             );
17023         chdir($tmpdir);
17024         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
17025         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
17026         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
17027         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
17028         my $fwopts = "-q";
17029         if (@paths) {
17030             for my $url (@paths) {
17031                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
17032             }
17033             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
17034         } else {
17035             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
17036             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
17037         }
17038         chdir('/');
17039     } else {
17040         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
17041         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
17042     }
17043 }
17044
17045 sub fetch_dell_fw {
17046     my $path = shift;
17047     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
17048     download($url);
17049 }
17050
17051 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
17052 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
17053 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
17054 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
17055     my $filename = shift;
17056
17057     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
17058     chomp $product;
17059     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
17060
17061     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
17062
17063     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
17064     my @paths;
17065     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
17066         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
17067         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
17068         my $oscode;
17069         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
17070             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
17071         } else {
17072             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
17073         }
17074         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
17075         {
17076             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
17077         }
17078     }
17079     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
17080         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
17081
17082         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
17083         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
17084
17085         my $cpath = $component->{path};
17086         for my $path (@paths) {
17087             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
17088                 push(@paths, $cpath);
17089             }
17090         }
17091     }
17092     return @paths;
17093 }
17094 </pre>
17095
17096 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
17097 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
17098 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
17099 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
17100 outdated.</p>
17101
17102       </div>
17103       <div class="tags">
17104
17105
17106         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>.
17107
17108
17109       </div>
17110     </div>
17111     <div class="padding"></div>
17112
17113     <div class="entry">
17114       <div class="title">
17115         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
17116       </div>
17117       <div class="date">
17118          7th October 2011
17119       </div>
17120       <div class="body">
17121         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
17122 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
17123 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
17124 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
17125 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
17126 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
17127 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
17128 models.</p>
17129
17130 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
17131 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
17132 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
17133 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
17134
17135 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
17136 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
17137 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
17138 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
17139 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
17140 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
17141 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
17142 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
17143 distributed.</p>
17144
17145 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
17146
17147 <ul>
17148
17149 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
17150   other relevant equipment.</li>
17151
17152 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
17153
17154 </ul>
17155
17156 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
17157 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
17158 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
17159 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
17160 books available.</p>
17161
17162 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
17163 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
17164 libraries. :)</p>
17165
17166       </div>
17167       <div class="tags">
17168
17169
17170         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
17171
17172
17173       </div>
17174     </div>
17175     <div class="padding"></div>
17176
17177     <div class="entry">
17178       <div class="title">
17179         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
17180       </div>
17181       <div class="date">
17182         17th September 2011
17183       </div>
17184       <div class="body">
17185         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
17186 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
17187 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
17188 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
17189 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
17190 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
17191 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
17192 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
17193
17194 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
17195
17196 <blockquote><pre>
17197 #!/bin/sh
17198 # apt-get install lsdvd
17199 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
17200 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
17201 </pre></blockquote>
17202
17203 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
17204 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
17205 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
17206 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
17207
17208 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
17209 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
17210 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
17211 back as an ISO.
17212
17213 <blockquote><pre>
17214 #!/bin/sh
17215 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
17216 set -e
17217 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
17218 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
17219 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
17220 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
17221 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
17222 </pre></blockquote>
17223
17224 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
17225
17226 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
17227 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
17228 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
17229 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
17230 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
17231
17232 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
17233 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
17234 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
17235 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
17236 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
17237 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
17238
17239       </div>
17240       <div class="tags">
17241
17242
17243         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
17244
17245
17246       </div>
17247     </div>
17248     <div class="padding"></div>
17249
17250     <div class="entry">
17251       <div class="title">
17252         <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>
17253       </div>
17254       <div class="date">
17255          4th August 2011
17256       </div>
17257       <div class="body">
17258         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
17259 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
17260 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
17261 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
17262 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
17263 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
17264 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
17265 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
17266 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
17267
17268 <p><blockquote>
17269 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
17270 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
17271 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
17272 </blockquote></p>
17273
17274 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
17275 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
17276 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
17277 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
17278 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
17279 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
17280 hard to explain.</p>
17281
17282 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
17283 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
17284 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
17285 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
17286 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
17287 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
17288 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
17289 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
17290 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
17291 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
17292 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
17293 mode).</p>
17294
17295 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
17296 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
17297 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
17298 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
17299 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
17300 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
17301 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
17302 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
17303 after visiting single user mode.</p>
17304
17305 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
17306 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
17307 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
17308 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
17309 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
17310 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
17311 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
17312 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
17313
17314 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
17315 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
17316 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
17317
17318       </div>
17319       <div class="tags">
17320
17321
17322         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>.
17323
17324
17325       </div>
17326     </div>
17327     <div class="padding"></div>
17328
17329     <div class="entry">
17330       <div class="title">
17331         <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>
17332       </div>
17333       <div class="date">
17334         30th July 2011
17335       </div>
17336       <div class="body">
17337         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
17338 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
17339 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
17340 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
17341 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
17342 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
17343 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
17344 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
17345 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
17346 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
17347 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
17348 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
17349 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
17350
17351 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
17352 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
17353 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
17354 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
17355 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
17356 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
17357 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
17358 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
17359 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
17360
17361 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
17362 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
17363 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
17364 is presented.</p>
17365
17366 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
17367 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
17368 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
17369 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
17370 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
17371 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
17372 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
17373 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
17374 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
17375 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
17376 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
17377 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
17378 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
17379 find time to push this forward.</p>
17380
17381       </div>
17382       <div class="tags">
17383
17384
17385         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>.
17386
17387
17388       </div>
17389     </div>
17390     <div class="padding"></div>
17391
17392     <div class="entry">
17393       <div class="title">
17394         <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>
17395       </div>
17396       <div class="date">
17397         29th July 2011
17398       </div>
17399       <div class="body">
17400         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
17401 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
17402 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
17403 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
17404 issues.</p>
17405
17406 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
17407 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
17408 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
17409
17410 <ol>
17411
17412 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
17413 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
17414 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
17415 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
17416 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
17417 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
17418 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
17419 Debian.</li>
17420
17421 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
17422 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
17423 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
17424 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
17425 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
17426 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
17427 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
17428 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
17429 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
17430 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
17431 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
17432 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
17433 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
17434
17435 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
17436 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
17437 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
17438 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
17439 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
17440 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
17441 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
17442 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
17443 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
17444 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
17445
17446 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
17447 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
17448 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
17449 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
17450 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
17451 latter behaviour.</li>
17452
17453 </ol>
17454
17455 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
17456 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
17457 it do not matter much.</p>
17458
17459 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
17460 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
17461 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
17462
17463       </div>
17464       <div class="tags">
17465
17466
17467         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>.
17468
17469
17470       </div>
17471     </div>
17472     <div class="padding"></div>
17473
17474     <div class="entry">
17475       <div class="title">
17476         <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>
17477       </div>
17478       <div class="date">
17479         26th July 2011
17480       </div>
17481       <div class="body">
17482         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
17483 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
17484 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
17485 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
17486 security support for a few years.</p>
17487
17488 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
17489 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
17490 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
17491 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
17492 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
17493 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
17494 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
17495 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
17496 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
17497 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
17498 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
17499 easier in the future.</p>
17500
17501 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
17502 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
17503 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
17504 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
17505 do not have time for.</p>
17506
17507       </div>
17508       <div class="tags">
17509
17510
17511         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>.
17512
17513
17514       </div>
17515     </div>
17516     <div class="padding"></div>
17517
17518     <div class="entry">
17519       <div class="title">
17520         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
17521       </div>
17522       <div class="date">
17523         20th June 2011
17524       </div>
17525       <div class="body">
17526         <p>Reading
17527 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
17528 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
17529 parts of the
17530 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
17531 and
17532 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
17533 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
17534 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
17535 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
17536
17537       </div>
17538       <div class="tags">
17539
17540
17541         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
17542
17543
17544       </div>
17545     </div>
17546     <div class="padding"></div>
17547
17548     <div class="entry">
17549       <div class="title">
17550         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
17551       </div>
17552       <div class="date">
17553         30th April 2011
17554       </div>
17555       <div class="body">
17556         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
17557 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
17558 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
17559 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
17560 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
17561 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
17562 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
17563 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
17564 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
17565 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
17566
17567 <p>Where is it?  Visit
17568 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
17569 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
17570 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
17571 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
17572
17573       </div>
17574       <div class="tags">
17575
17576
17577         Tags: <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/open311">open311</a>.
17578
17579
17580       </div>
17581     </div>
17582     <div class="padding"></div>
17583
17584     <div class="entry">
17585       <div class="title">
17586         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
17587       </div>
17588       <div class="date">
17589         29th April 2011
17590       </div>
17591       <div class="body">
17592         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
17593 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
17594 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
17595 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
17596 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
17597 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
17598 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
17599 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
17600 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
17601 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
17602 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
17603 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
17604 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
17605
17606 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
17607 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
17608 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
17609 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
17610 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
17611 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
17612 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
17613 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
17614 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
17615 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
17616 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
17617 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
17618 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
17619
17620 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
17621 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
17622 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
17623 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
17624 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
17625 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
17626 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
17627 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
17628 it.</p>
17629
17630 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
17631 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
17632 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
17633 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
17634 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
17635 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
17636 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
17637
17638 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
17639 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
17640 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
17641 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
17642 and range= options.</p>
17643
17644 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
17645 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
17646 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
17647 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
17648 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
17649 to best handle this.  I've noticed
17650 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
17651 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
17652 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
17653 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
17654
17655 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
17656 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
17657 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
17658 discussions instead of only
17659 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
17660 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
17661 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
17662 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
17663 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
17664 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
17665
17666       </div>
17667       <div class="tags">
17668
17669
17670         Tags: <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/open311">open311</a>.
17671
17672
17673       </div>
17674     </div>
17675     <div class="padding"></div>
17676
17677     <div class="entry">
17678       <div class="title">
17679         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
17680       </div>
17681       <div class="date">
17682          6th April 2011
17683       </div>
17684       <div class="body">
17685         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
17686 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
17687 A few days ago the project
17688 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
17689 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
17690 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
17691 into Gnash.</p>
17692
17693       </div>
17694       <div class="tags">
17695
17696
17697         Tags: <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>.
17698
17699
17700       </div>
17701     </div>
17702     <div class="padding"></div>
17703
17704     <div class="entry">
17705       <div class="title">
17706         <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>
17707       </div>
17708       <div class="date">
17709          3rd April 2011
17710       </div>
17711       <div class="body">
17712         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
17713 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
17714 update in English.</p>
17715
17716 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
17717 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
17718 of the British service
17719 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
17720 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
17721 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
17722 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
17723 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
17724 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
17725 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
17726 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
17727 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
17728 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
17729 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
17730 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
17731 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
17732
17733 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
17734 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
17735 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
17736 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
17737 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
17738 public infrastructure.</p>
17739
17740 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
17741 such service?</p>
17742
17743       </div>
17744       <div class="tags">
17745
17746
17747         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>.
17748
17749
17750       </div>
17751     </div>
17752     <div class="padding"></div>
17753
17754     <div class="entry">
17755       <div class="title">
17756         <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>
17757       </div>
17758       <div class="date">
17759         28th January 2011
17760       </div>
17761       <div class="body">
17762         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
17763 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
17764 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
17765 available on the Internet, and check our locally
17766 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
17767 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
17768 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
17769 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
17770 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
17771 out which security holes were present in our free software
17772 collection.</p>
17773
17774 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
17775 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
17776 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
17777 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
17778 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
17779 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
17780 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
17781 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
17782 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
17783 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
17784 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
17785 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
17786 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
17787 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
17788 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
17789 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
17790
17791 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
17792 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
17793 check out, one could look up
17794 <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
17795 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
17796 The most recent one is
17797 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
17798 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
17799 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
17800
17801 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
17802 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
17803 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
17804 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
17805 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
17806 security issues out.</p>
17807
17808 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
17809 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
17810 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
17811 RHEL is providing
17812 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
17813 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
17814 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
17815
17816 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
17817 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
17818 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
17819 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
17820 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
17821 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
17822 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
17823 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
17824 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
17825 established soon.</p>
17826
17827 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
17828 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
17829 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
17830 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
17831 for their packages.</p>
17832
17833       </div>
17834       <div class="tags">
17835
17836
17837         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>.
17838
17839
17840       </div>
17841     </div>
17842     <div class="padding"></div>
17843
17844     <div class="entry">
17845       <div class="title">
17846         <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>
17847       </div>
17848       <div class="date">
17849         23rd January 2011
17850       </div>
17851       <div class="body">
17852         <p>In the
17853 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
17854 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
17855 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
17856 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
17857 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
17858 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
17859 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
17860 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
17861 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
17862 one of my machines like this:</p>
17863
17864 <pre>
17865 loaded modules:
17866 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
17867 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
17868 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
17869 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
17870 10de:03ec pata_amd
17871 10de:03f6 sata_nv
17872 1022:1103 k8temp
17873 109e:036e bttv
17874 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
17875 11ab:4364 sky2
17876 </pre>
17877
17878 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
17879 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
17880
17881 <pre>
17882 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
17883     echo loaded pci modules:
17884     (
17885         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
17886         for address in * ; do
17887             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
17888                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
17889                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
17890                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
17891                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
17892                     echo "$id $module"
17893                 fi
17894             fi
17895         done
17896     )
17897     echo
17898 fi
17899 </pre>
17900
17901 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
17902 mappings:</p>
17903
17904 <pre>
17905 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
17906     echo loaded usb modules:
17907     (
17908         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
17909         for address in * ; do
17910             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
17911                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
17912                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
17913                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
17914                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
17915                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
17916                         echo "$id $module"
17917                     fi
17918                 fi
17919             fi
17920         done
17921     )
17922     echo
17923 fi
17924 </pre>
17925
17926 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
17927 well.</p>
17928
17929       </div>
17930       <div class="tags">
17931
17932
17933         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>.
17934
17935
17936       </div>
17937     </div>
17938     <div class="padding"></div>
17939
17940     <div class="entry">
17941       <div class="title">
17942         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
17943       </div>
17944       <div class="date">
17945         16th January 2011
17946       </div>
17947       <div class="body">
17948         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
17949 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
17950 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
17951 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
17952 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
17953 the Wikipedia article on
17954 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
17955 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
17956 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
17957 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
17958 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
17959 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
17960 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
17961 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
17962 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
17963 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
17964 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
17965 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
17966
17967 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
17968 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
17969 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
17970 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
17971 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
17972 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
17973 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
17974 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
17975 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
17976 from last week</a>.</p>
17977
17978 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
17979 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
17980 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
17981 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
17982 was without royalties and license terms, check out
17983 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
17984 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
17985
17986 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
17987 available from
17988 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
17989 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
17990 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
17991
17992 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
17993 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
17994 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
17995 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
17996
17997       </div>
17998       <div class="tags">
17999
18000
18001         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
18002
18003
18004       </div>
18005     </div>
18006     <div class="padding"></div>
18007
18008     <div class="entry">
18009       <div class="title">
18010         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
18011       </div>
18012       <div class="date">
18013         12th January 2011
18014       </div>
18015       <div class="body">
18016         <p>Today I discovered
18017 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
18018 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
18019 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
18020 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
18021 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
18022 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
18023 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
18024 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
18025 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
18026 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
18027 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
18028 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
18029 on the Google announcement is available from
18030 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
18031 A good read. :)</p>
18032
18033 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
18034 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
18035 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
18036 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
18037 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
18038 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
18039 browsers support H.264, and others support
18040 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
18041 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
18042 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
18043 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
18044 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
18045 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
18046 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
18047 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
18048
18049 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
18050 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
18051 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
18052 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
18053 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
18054 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
18055 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
18056
18057 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
18058 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
18059 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
18060 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
18061 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
18062 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
18063 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
18064
18065 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
18066 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
18067 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
18068 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
18069 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
18070 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
18071 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
18072
18073 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
18074 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
18075 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
18076 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
18077 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
18078 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
18079 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
18080 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
18081 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
18082 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
18083 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
18084 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
18085 I guess time will tell.</p>
18086
18087 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
18088 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
18089 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
18090
18091       </div>
18092       <div class="tags">
18093
18094
18095         Tags: <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/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
18096
18097
18098       </div>
18099     </div>
18100     <div class="padding"></div>
18101
18102     <div class="entry">
18103       <div class="title">
18104         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
18105       </div>
18106       <div class="date">
18107         30th December 2010
18108       </div>
18109       <div class="body">
18110         <p>After trying to
18111 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
18112 Ogg Theora</a> to
18113 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
18114 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
18115 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
18116 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
18117 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
18118 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
18119 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
18120
18121 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
18122 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
18123 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
18124 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
18125 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
18126 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
18127 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
18128
18129 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
18130 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
18131
18132       </div>
18133       <div class="tags">
18134
18135
18136         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
18137
18138
18139       </div>
18140     </div>
18141     <div class="padding"></div>
18142
18143     <div class="entry">
18144       <div class="title">
18145         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
18146       </div>
18147       <div class="date">
18148         27th December 2010
18149       </div>
18150       <div class="body">
18151         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
18152 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
18153 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
18154 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
18155 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
18156 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
18157 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
18158 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
18159
18160 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
18161 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
18162 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
18163 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
18164 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
18165 page</a>.</p>
18166
18167 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
18168 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
18169 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
18170 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
18171 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
18172 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
18173 specification on equal terms.</p>
18174
18175 <blockquote>
18176
18177 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
18178 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
18179 open standard:</p>
18180
18181 <ul>
18182
18183 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
18184 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
18185 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
18186 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
18187
18188 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
18189 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
18190 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
18191 nominal fee.</li>
18192
18193 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
18194 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
18195 free basis.</li>
18196
18197 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
18198
18199 </ul>
18200 </blockquote>
18201
18202 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
18203 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
18204 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
18205 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
18206 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
18207 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
18208 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
18209
18210 <blockquote>
18211
18212 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
18213
18214 <ol>
18215
18216 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
18217 tilgængelig.</li>
18218
18219 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
18220 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
18221
18222 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
18223 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
18224
18225 </ol>
18226
18227 </blockquote>
18228
18229 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
18230 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
18231
18232 <blockquote>
18233
18234 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
18235
18236 <ol>
18237
18238 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
18239 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
18240
18241 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
18242 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
18243 Standard themselves;</li>
18244
18245 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
18246 any party or in any business model;</li>
18247
18248 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
18249 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
18250 parties;</li>
18251
18252 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
18253 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
18254 parties.</li>
18255
18256 </ol>
18257
18258 </blockquote>
18259
18260 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
18261 its
18262 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
18263 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
18264
18265 <blockquote>
18266 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
18267
18268 <ul>
18269
18270 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
18271   democratic:
18272
18273          <ul>
18274
18275          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
18276             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
18277             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
18278             and managed.</li>
18279
18280          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
18281             method, can be changed through input from all
18282             participants.</li>
18283
18284          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
18285             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
18286
18287          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
18288             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
18289
18290          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
18291             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
18292             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
18293
18294          </ul>
18295
18296 </li>
18297
18298 </ul>
18299
18300 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
18301 <ul>
18302
18303 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
18304   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
18305   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
18306   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
18307   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
18308
18309 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
18310   a technical or economic barriers</li>
18311
18312 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
18313   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
18314   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
18315   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
18316   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
18317   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
18318   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
18319   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
18320   intended to function.</li>
18321
18322 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
18323   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
18324   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
18325
18326 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
18327   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
18328   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
18329   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
18330   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
18331   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
18332   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
18333   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
18334
18335       <ul>
18336
18337       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
18338         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
18339         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
18340
18341       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
18342         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
18343         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
18344         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
18345
18346       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
18347         licensor</li>
18348
18349       </ul>
18350 </li>
18351
18352 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
18353   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
18354   or restricted licensing terms</li>
18355
18356 </ul>
18357
18358 </blockquote>
18359
18360 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
18361 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
18362 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
18363 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
18364 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
18365 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
18366 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
18367 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
18368 Standards.</p>
18369
18370       </div>
18371       <div class="tags">
18372
18373
18374         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
18375
18376
18377       </div>
18378     </div>
18379     <div class="padding"></div>
18380
18381     <div class="entry">
18382       <div class="title">
18383         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
18384       </div>
18385       <div class="date">
18386         25th December 2010
18387       </div>
18388       <div class="body">
18389         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
18390 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
18391
18392 <blockquote>
18393
18394 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
18395 as follows:</p>
18396
18397 <ol>
18398
18399 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
18400 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
18401 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
18402
18403 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
18404 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
18405 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
18406 parties.</li>
18407
18408 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
18409 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
18410 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
18411
18412 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
18413 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
18414
18415 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
18416
18417 </ol>
18418
18419 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
18420 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
18421 products based on the standard.</p>
18422 </blockquote>
18423
18424 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
18425 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
18426 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
18427 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
18428 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
18429 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
18430 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
18431 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
18432
18433 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
18434
18435 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
18436 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
18437 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
18438 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
18439 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
18440 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
18441 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
18442 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
18443 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
18444 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
18445 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
18446 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
18447 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
18448 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
18449
18450 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
18451
18452 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
18453 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
18454 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
18455 documentation indicating this.</p>
18456
18457 <p>According to
18458 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
18459 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
18460 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
18461 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
18462 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
18463 report is correct.</p>
18464
18465 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
18466
18467 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
18468 container format</a> and both the
18469 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
18470 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
18471 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
18472
18473 <blockquote>
18474
18475 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
18476 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
18477 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
18478 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
18479 specification compliance.
18480
18481 </blockquote>
18482
18483 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
18484 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
18485 this is the term:<p>
18486
18487 <blockquote>
18488
18489 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
18490 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
18491 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
18492 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
18493 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
18494 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
18495 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
18496 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
18497 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
18498 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
18499 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
18500 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
18501
18502 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
18503 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
18504 </blockquote>
18505
18506 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
18507 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
18508 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
18509 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
18510 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
18511
18512 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
18513
18514 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
18515 Theora format.
18516 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
18517 and
18518 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
18519 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
18520 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
18521 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
18522 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
18523 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
18524 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
18525 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
18526
18527 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
18528
18529 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
18530
18531 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
18532
18533 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
18534 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
18535 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
18536 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
18537 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
18538 this.</p>
18539
18540 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
18541 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
18542
18543       </div>
18544       <div class="tags">
18545
18546
18547         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
18548
18549
18550       </div>
18551     </div>
18552     <div class="padding"></div>
18553
18554     <div class="entry">
18555       <div class="title">
18556         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
18557       </div>
18558       <div class="date">
18559         25th December 2010
18560       </div>
18561       <div class="body">
18562         <p>A few days ago
18563 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
18564 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
18565 2.0 of
18566 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
18567 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
18568 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
18569 Nothing very surprising there, given
18570 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
18571 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
18572 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
18573 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
18574 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
18575 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
18576 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
18577 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
18578 standard definition from its content.</p>
18579
18580 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
18581 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
18582 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
18583 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
18584 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
18585 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
18586 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
18587 background information about that story is available in
18588 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
18589 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
18590
18591 <blockquote>
18592 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
18593 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
18594 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
18595
18596 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
18597
18598 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
18599
18600 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
18601
18602 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
18603
18604 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
18605
18606 <p>
18607 <ul>
18608 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
18609 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
18610 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
18611 </ul>
18612 </p>
18613
18614 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
18615
18616 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
18617
18618 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
18619
18620 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
18621
18622 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
18623
18624
18625 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
18626 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
18627 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
18628 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
18629 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
18630 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
18631
18632 </p>
18633
18634 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
18635
18636 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
18637
18638 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
18639
18640 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
18641
18642 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
18643
18644 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
18645
18646 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
18647
18648 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
18649
18650 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
18651
18652 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
18653
18654 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
18655
18656 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
18657
18658 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
18659
18660 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
18661
18662 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
18663
18664 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
18665
18666 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
18667
18668 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
18669
18670 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
18671
18672 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
18673
18674 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
18675
18676 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
18677
18678 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
18679
18680 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
18681
18682 <p>On security:</p>
18683
18684 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
18685
18686 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
18687
18688 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
18689
18690 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
18691
18692 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
18693
18694 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
18695
18696 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
18697
18698 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
18699
18700 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
18701
18702 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
18703
18704 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
18705
18706 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
18707
18708 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
18709
18710 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
18711
18712 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
18713
18714 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
18715
18716 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
18717
18718 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
18719
18720 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
18721
18722 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
18723
18724 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
18725
18726 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
18727
18728 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
18729
18730 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
18731
18732 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
18733
18734 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
18735
18736 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
18737
18738 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
18739
18740 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
18741
18742 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
18743
18744 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
18745
18746 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
18747
18748 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
18749
18750 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
18751
18752 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
18753
18754 <p>Cordially,<br>
18755 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
18756 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
18757 </blockquote>
18758
18759       </div>
18760       <div class="tags">
18761
18762
18763         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</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>.
18764
18765
18766       </div>
18767     </div>
18768     <div class="padding"></div>
18769
18770     <div class="entry">
18771       <div class="title">
18772         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
18773       </div>
18774       <div class="date">
18775         25th December 2010
18776       </div>
18777       <div class="body">
18778         <p>Half a year ago I
18779 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
18780 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
18781 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
18782 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
18783
18784 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
18785 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
18786 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
18787 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
18788 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
18789 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
18790 got such a great test tool available.</p>
18791
18792       </div>
18793       <div class="tags">
18794
18795
18796         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
18797
18798
18799       </div>
18800     </div>
18801     <div class="padding"></div>
18802
18803     <div class="entry">
18804       <div class="title">
18805         <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>
18806       </div>
18807       <div class="date">
18808         22nd December 2010
18809       </div>
18810       <div class="body">
18811         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
18812 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
18813 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
18814 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
18815 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
18816 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
18817 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
18818 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
18819 university.</p>
18820
18821 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
18822 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
18823 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
18824 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
18825 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
18826 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
18827 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
18828 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
18829
18830 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
18831 I perform on a new model.</p>
18832
18833 <ul>
18834
18835 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
18836 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
18837 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
18838
18839 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
18840 installation, X.org is working.</li>
18841
18842 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
18843 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
18844 reported by the program.</li>
18845
18846 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
18847 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
18848 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
18849 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
18850 normally test this by playing
18851 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
18852 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
18853
18854 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
18855 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
18856
18857 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
18858 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
18859
18860 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
18861 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
18862
18863 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
18864 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
18865 few.</li>
18866
18867 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
18868 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
18869 notice this.</li>
18870
18871 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
18872 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
18873 resume.</li>
18874
18875 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
18876 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
18877 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
18878 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
18879 not.</li>
18880
18881 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
18882 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
18883 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
18884 existence.</li>
18885
18886 </ul>
18887
18888 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
18889 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
18890 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
18891 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
18892 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
18893 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
18894 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
18895 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
18896
18897       </div>
18898       <div class="tags">
18899
18900
18901         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>.
18902
18903
18904       </div>
18905     </div>
18906     <div class="padding"></div>
18907
18908     <div class="entry">
18909       <div class="title">
18910         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
18911       </div>
18912       <div class="date">
18913         11th December 2010
18914       </div>
18915       <div class="body">
18916         <p>As I continue to explore
18917 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
18918 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
18919 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
18920
18921 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
18922 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
18923 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
18924 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
18925 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
18926 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
18927 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
18928 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
18929 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
18930 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
18931 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
18932 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
18933 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
18934 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
18935 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
18936 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
18937 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
18938 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
18939 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
18940 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
18941
18942 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
18943 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
18944 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
18945 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
18946 If the Skolelinux foundation
18947 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
18948 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
18949 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
18950 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
18951 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
18952 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
18953 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
18954 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
18955
18956 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
18957 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
18958 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
18959 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
18960 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
18961 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
18962 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
18963 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
18964 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
18965 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
18966 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
18967 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
18968 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
18969 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
18970 currencies.</p>
18971
18972 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
18973 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
18974 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
18975 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
18976 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
18977 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
18978 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
18979 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
18980 BitCoins.  Check out
18981 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
18982 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
18983 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
18984 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
18985 yet.</p>
18986
18987 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
18988 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
18989 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
18990 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
18991 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
18992
18993       </div>
18994       <div class="tags">
18995
18996
18997         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>.
18998
18999
19000       </div>
19001     </div>
19002     <div class="padding"></div>
19003
19004     <div class="entry">
19005       <div class="title">
19006         <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>
19007       </div>
19008       <div class="date">
19009         10th December 2010
19010       </div>
19011       <div class="body">
19012         <p>With this weeks lawless
19013 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
19014 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
19015 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
19016 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
19017 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
19018 A blog post from
19019 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
19020 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
19021 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
19022 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
19023 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
19024 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
19025 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
19026
19027 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
19028 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
19029 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
19030 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
19031 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
19032 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
19033 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
19034 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
19035 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
19036 Debian</a> soon.</p>
19037
19038 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
19039 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
19040 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
19041 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
19042 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
19043 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
19044 you can even get
19045 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
19046 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
19047 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
19048 on the current exchange rates.</p>
19049
19050 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
19051 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
19052 donations to the address
19053 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
19054
19055       </div>
19056       <div class="tags">
19057
19058
19059         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>.
19060
19061
19062       </div>
19063     </div>
19064     <div class="padding"></div>
19065
19066     <div class="entry">
19067       <div class="title">
19068         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
19069       </div>
19070       <div class="date">
19071          9th December 2010
19072       </div>
19073       <div class="body">
19074         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
19075 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
19076 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
19077 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
19078 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
19079 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
19080 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
19081 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
19082 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
19083 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
19084 operational.</p>
19085
19086 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
19087 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
19088 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
19089 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
19090 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
19091 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
19092 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
19093
19094       </div>
19095       <div class="tags">
19096
19097
19098         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
19099
19100
19101       </div>
19102     </div>
19103     <div class="padding"></div>
19104
19105     <div class="entry">
19106       <div class="title">
19107         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
19108       </div>
19109       <div class="date">
19110         29th November 2010
19111       </div>
19112       <div class="body">
19113         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
19114 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
19115 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
19116 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
19117 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
19118 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
19119
19120 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
19121 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
19122 will hold its
19123 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
19124 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
19125 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
19126 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
19127 vote this year.</p>
19128
19129       </div>
19130       <div class="tags">
19131
19132
19133         Tags: <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>.
19134
19135
19136       </div>
19137     </div>
19138     <div class="padding"></div>
19139
19140     <div class="entry">
19141       <div class="title">
19142         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
19143       </div>
19144       <div class="date">
19145         27th November 2010
19146       </div>
19147       <div class="body">
19148         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
19149 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
19150 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
19151 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
19152 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
19153 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
19154 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
19155 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
19156
19157 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
19158 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
19159 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
19160 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
19161 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
19162 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
19163 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
19164 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
19165 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
19166 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
19167 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
19168
19169 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
19170 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
19171 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
19172 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
19173 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
19174 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
19175 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
19176 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
19177 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
19178 what is going on.</p>
19179
19180       </div>
19181       <div class="tags">
19182
19183
19184         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>.
19185
19186
19187       </div>
19188     </div>
19189     <div class="padding"></div>
19190
19191     <div class="entry">
19192       <div class="title">
19193         <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>
19194       </div>
19195       <div class="date">
19196         22nd November 2010
19197       </div>
19198       <div class="body">
19199         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
19200 upgrade testing of the
19201 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
19202 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
19203 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
19204 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
19205
19206 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
19207
19208 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
19209
19210 <blockquote><p>
19211   apache2.2-bin
19212   aptdaemon
19213   baobab
19214   binfmt-support
19215   browser-plugin-gnash
19216   cheese-common
19217   cli-common
19218   cups-pk-helper
19219   dmz-cursor-theme
19220   empathy
19221   empathy-common
19222   freedesktop-sound-theme
19223   freeglut3
19224   gconf-defaults-service
19225   gdm-themes
19226   gedit-plugins
19227   geoclue
19228   geoclue-hostip
19229   geoclue-localnet
19230   geoclue-manual
19231   geoclue-yahoo
19232   gnash
19233   gnash-common
19234   gnome
19235   gnome-backgrounds
19236   gnome-cards-data
19237   gnome-codec-install
19238   gnome-core
19239   gnome-desktop-environment
19240   gnome-disk-utility
19241   gnome-screenshot
19242   gnome-search-tool
19243   gnome-session-canberra
19244   gnome-system-log
19245   gnome-themes-extras
19246   gnome-themes-more
19247   gnome-user-share
19248   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
19249   gstreamer0.10-tools
19250   gtk2-engines
19251   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
19252   gtk2-engines-smooth
19253   hamster-applet
19254   libapache2-mod-dnssd
19255   libapr1
19256   libaprutil1
19257   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
19258   libaprutil1-ldap
19259   libart2.0-cil
19260   libboost-date-time1.42.0
19261   libboost-python1.42.0
19262   libboost-thread1.42.0
19263   libchamplain-0.4-0
19264   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
19265   libcheese-gtk18
19266   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
19267   libcryptui0
19268   libdiscid0
19269   libelf1
19270   libepc-1.0-2
19271   libepc-common
19272   libepc-ui-1.0-2
19273   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
19274   libfreerdp0
19275   libgconf2.0-cil
19276   libgdata-common
19277   libgdata7
19278   libgdu-gtk0
19279   libgee2
19280   libgeoclue0
19281   libgexiv2-0
19282   libgif4
19283   libglade2.0-cil
19284   libglib2.0-cil
19285   libgmime2.4-cil
19286   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
19287   libgnome2.24-cil
19288   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
19289   libgpod-common
19290   libgpod4
19291   libgtk2.0-cil
19292   libgtkglext1
19293   libgtksourceview2.0-common
19294   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
19295   libmono-addins0.2-cil
19296   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
19297   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
19298   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
19299   libmono-posix2.0-cil
19300   libmono-security2.0-cil
19301   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
19302   libmono-system2.0-cil
19303   libmtp8
19304   libmusicbrainz3-6
19305   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
19306   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
19307   libopal3.6.8
19308   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
19309   libpt2.6.7
19310   libpython2.6
19311   librpm1
19312   librpmio1
19313   libsdl1.2debian
19314   libsrtp0
19315   libssh-4
19316   libtelepathy-farsight0
19317   libtelepathy-glib0
19318   libtidy-0.99-0
19319   media-player-info
19320   mesa-utils
19321   mono-2.0-gac
19322   mono-gac
19323   mono-runtime
19324   nautilus-sendto
19325   nautilus-sendto-empathy
19326   p7zip-full
19327   pkg-config
19328   python-aptdaemon
19329   python-aptdaemon-gtk
19330   python-axiom
19331   python-beautifulsoup
19332   python-bugbuddy
19333   python-clientform
19334   python-coherence
19335   python-configobj
19336   python-crypto
19337   python-cupshelpers
19338   python-elementtree
19339   python-epsilon
19340   python-evolution
19341   python-feedparser
19342   python-gdata
19343   python-gdbm
19344   python-gst0.10
19345   python-gtkglext1
19346   python-gtksourceview2
19347   python-httplib2
19348   python-louie
19349   python-mako
19350   python-markupsafe
19351   python-mechanize
19352   python-nevow
19353   python-notify
19354   python-opengl
19355   python-openssl
19356   python-pam
19357   python-pkg-resources
19358   python-pyasn1
19359   python-pysqlite2
19360   python-rdflib
19361   python-serial
19362   python-tagpy
19363   python-twisted-bin
19364   python-twisted-conch
19365   python-twisted-core
19366   python-twisted-web
19367   python-utidylib
19368   python-webkit
19369   python-xdg
19370   python-zope.interface
19371   remmina
19372   remmina-plugin-data
19373   remmina-plugin-rdp
19374   remmina-plugin-vnc
19375   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
19376   rhythmbox-plugins
19377   rpm-common
19378   rpm2cpio
19379   seahorse-plugins
19380   shotwell
19381   software-center
19382   system-config-printer-udev
19383   telepathy-gabble
19384   telepathy-mission-control-5
19385   telepathy-salut
19386   tomboy
19387   totem
19388   totem-coherence
19389   totem-mozilla
19390   totem-plugins
19391   transmission-common
19392   xdg-user-dirs
19393   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
19394   xserver-xephyr
19395 </p></blockquote>
19396
19397 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
19398
19399 <blockquote><p>
19400   cheese
19401   ekiga
19402   eog
19403   epiphany-extensions
19404   evolution-exchange
19405   fast-user-switch-applet
19406   file-roller
19407   gcalctool
19408   gconf-editor
19409   gdm
19410   gedit
19411   gedit-common
19412   gnome-games
19413   gnome-games-data
19414   gnome-nettool
19415   gnome-system-tools
19416   gnome-themes
19417   gnuchess
19418   gucharmap
19419   guile-1.8-libs
19420   libavahi-ui0
19421   libdmx1
19422   libgalago3
19423   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
19424   libgtksourceview2.0-0
19425   liblircclient0
19426   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
19427   libspeexdsp1
19428   libsvga1
19429   rhythmbox
19430   seahorse
19431   sound-juicer
19432   system-config-printer
19433   totem-common
19434   transmission-gtk
19435   vinagre
19436   vino
19437 </p></blockquote>
19438
19439 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
19440
19441 <blockquote><p>
19442   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
19443 </p></blockquote>
19444
19445 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
19446
19447 <blockquote><p>
19448 [nothing]
19449 </p></blockquote>
19450
19451 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
19452
19453 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
19454
19455 <blockquote><p>
19456   ksmserver
19457 </p></blockquote>
19458
19459 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
19460
19461 <blockquote><p>
19462   kwin
19463   network-manager-kde
19464 </p></blockquote>
19465
19466 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
19467
19468 <blockquote><p>
19469   arts
19470   dolphin
19471   freespacenotifier
19472   google-gadgets-gst
19473   google-gadgets-xul
19474   kappfinder
19475   kcalc
19476   kcharselect
19477   kde-core
19478   kde-plasma-desktop
19479   kde-standard
19480   kde-window-manager
19481   kdeartwork
19482   kdeartwork-emoticons
19483   kdeartwork-style
19484   kdeartwork-theme-icon
19485   kdebase
19486   kdebase-apps
19487   kdebase-workspace
19488   kdebase-workspace-bin
19489   kdebase-workspace-data
19490   kdeeject
19491   kdelibs
19492   kdeplasma-addons
19493   kdeutils
19494   kdewallpapers
19495   kdf
19496   kfloppy
19497   kgpg
19498   khelpcenter4
19499   kinfocenter
19500   konq-plugins-l10n
19501   konqueror-nsplugins
19502   kscreensaver
19503   kscreensaver-xsavers
19504   ktimer
19505   kwrite
19506   libgle3
19507   libkde4-ruby1.8
19508   libkonq5
19509   libkonq5-templates
19510   libnetpbm10
19511   libplasma-ruby
19512   libplasma-ruby1.8
19513   libqt4-ruby1.8
19514   marble-data
19515   marble-plugins
19516   netpbm
19517   nuvola-icon-theme
19518   plasma-dataengines-workspace
19519   plasma-desktop
19520   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
19521   plasma-runners-addons
19522   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
19523   plasma-scriptengine-python
19524   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
19525   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
19526   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
19527   plasma-scriptengines
19528   plasma-wallpapers-addons
19529   plasma-widget-folderview
19530   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
19531   ruby
19532   sweeper
19533   update-notifier-kde
19534   xscreensaver-data-extra
19535   xscreensaver-gl
19536   xscreensaver-gl-extra
19537   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
19538 </p></blockquote>
19539
19540 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
19541
19542 <blockquote><p>
19543   ark
19544   google-gadgets-common
19545   google-gadgets-qt
19546   htdig
19547   kate
19548   kdebase-bin
19549   kdebase-data
19550   kdepasswd
19551   kfind
19552   klipper
19553   konq-plugins
19554   konqueror
19555   ksysguard
19556   ksysguardd
19557   libarchive1
19558   libcln6
19559   libeet1
19560   libeina-svn-06
19561   libggadget-1.0-0b
19562   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
19563   libgps19
19564   libkdecorations4
19565   libkephal4
19566   libkonq4
19567   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
19568   libkscreensaver5
19569   libksgrd4
19570   libksignalplotter4
19571   libkunitconversion4
19572   libkwineffects1a
19573   libmarblewidget4
19574   libntrack-qt4-1
19575   libntrack0
19576   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
19577   libplasmaclock4a
19578   libplasmagenericshell4
19579   libprocesscore4a
19580   libprocessui4a
19581   libqalculate5
19582   libqedje0a
19583   libqtruby4shared2
19584   libqzion0a
19585   libruby1.8
19586   libscim8c2a
19587   libsmokekdecore4-3
19588   libsmokekdeui4-3
19589   libsmokekfile3
19590   libsmokekhtml3
19591   libsmokekio3
19592   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
19593   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
19594   libsmokekparts3
19595   libsmokektexteditor3
19596   libsmokekutils3
19597   libsmokenepomuk3
19598   libsmokephonon3
19599   libsmokeplasma3
19600   libsmokeqtcore4-3
19601   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
19602   libsmokeqtgui4-3
19603   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
19604   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
19605   libsmokeqtscript4-3
19606   libsmokeqtsql4-3
19607   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
19608   libsmokeqttest4-3
19609   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
19610   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
19611   libsmokeqtxml4-3
19612   libsmokesolid3
19613   libsmokesoprano3
19614   libtaskmanager4a
19615   libtidy-0.99-0
19616   libweather-ion4a
19617   libxklavier16
19618   libxxf86misc1
19619   okteta
19620   oxygencursors
19621   plasma-dataengines-addons
19622   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
19623   plasma-widget-lancelot
19624   plasma-widgets-addons
19625   plasma-widgets-workspace
19626   polkit-kde-1
19627   ruby1.8
19628   systemsettings
19629   update-notifier-common
19630 </p></blockquote>
19631
19632 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
19633 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
19634 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
19635 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
19636
19637       </div>
19638       <div class="tags">
19639
19640
19641         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>.
19642
19643
19644       </div>
19645     </div>
19646     <div class="padding"></div>
19647
19648     <div class="entry">
19649       <div class="title">
19650         <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>
19651       </div>
19652       <div class="date">
19653         22nd November 2010
19654       </div>
19655       <div class="body">
19656         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
19657 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
19658 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
19659 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
19660 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
19661 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
19662 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
19663 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
19664 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
19665
19666 <p>I found
19667 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
19668 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
19669 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
19670 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
19671 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
19672 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
19673
19674 <pre>
19675 #!/bin/sh
19676
19677 # Based on
19678 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
19679
19680 set -e
19681 set -x
19682
19683 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
19684     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
19685     exit 1
19686 else
19687     host="$1"
19688 fi
19689
19690 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
19691     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
19692     exit 1
19693 fi
19694
19695 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
19696 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
19697 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
19698 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
19699
19700 img=$host.img
19701 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
19702 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
19703
19704 parted $img mklabel msdos
19705 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
19706 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
19707 parted $img set 1 boot on
19708
19709 modprobe dm-mod
19710 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
19711 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
19712
19713 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
19714 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
19715 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
19716
19717 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
19718 losetup -d /dev/loop0
19719 </pre>
19720
19721 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
19722 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
19723
19724 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
19725 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
19726 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
19727 seem to work just fine.</p>
19728
19729       </div>
19730       <div class="tags">
19731
19732
19733         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>.
19734
19735
19736       </div>
19737     </div>
19738     <div class="padding"></div>
19739
19740     <div class="entry">
19741       <div class="title">
19742         <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>
19743       </div>
19744       <div class="date">
19745         20th November 2010
19746       </div>
19747       <div class="body">
19748         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
19749 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
19750 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
19751 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
19752
19753 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
19754 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
19755 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
19756
19757 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
19758
19759 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
19760
19761 <blockquote><p>
19762   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
19763   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
19764   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
19765   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
19766   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
19767   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
19768   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
19769   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
19770   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
19771   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
19772   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
19773   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
19774   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
19775   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
19776   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
19777   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
19778   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
19779   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
19780   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
19781   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
19782   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
19783   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
19784   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
19785   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
19786   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
19787   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
19788   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
19789   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
19790   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
19791   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
19792   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
19793   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
19794   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
19795   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
19796   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
19797   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
19798   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
19799   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
19800   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
19801   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
19802   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
19803   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
19804   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
19805   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
19806   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
19807   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
19808   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
19809   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
19810   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
19811   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
19812   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
19813   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
19814   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
19815   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
19816   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
19817   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
19818   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
19819   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
19820   zip
19821 </p></blockquote>
19822
19823 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
19824
19825 <blockquote><p>
19826   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
19827   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
19828   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
19829   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
19830   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
19831   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
19832   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
19833   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
19834   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
19835   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
19836   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
19837   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
19838   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
19839   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
19840   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
19841   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
19842   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
19843   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
19844   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
19845   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
19846   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
19847   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
19848   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
19849   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
19850   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
19851   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
19852   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
19853   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
19854   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
19855 </p></blockquote>
19856
19857 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
19858
19859 <blockquote><p>
19860   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
19861 </p></blockquote>
19862
19863 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
19864
19865 <blockquote><p>
19866 [nothing]
19867 </p></blockquote>
19868
19869 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
19870
19871 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
19872
19873 <blockquote><p>
19874   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
19875   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
19876   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
19877   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
19878   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
19879   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
19880   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
19881   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
19882   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
19883   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
19884   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
19885   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
19886   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
19887   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
19888   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
19889   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
19890   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
19891   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
19892   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
19893   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
19894   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
19895   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
19896   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
19897   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
19898   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
19899   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
19900   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
19901   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
19902   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
19903   ttf-sazanami-gothic
19904 </p></blockquote>
19905
19906 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
19907
19908 <blockquote><p>
19909   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
19910   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
19911   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
19912   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
19913   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
19914   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
19915   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
19916   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
19917   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
19918   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
19919   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
19920   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
19921   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
19922   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
19923   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
19924   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
19925   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
19926   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
19927   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
19928   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
19929   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
19930   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
19931   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
19932   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
19933   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
19934   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
19935   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
19936   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
19937   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
19938   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
19939   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
19940   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
19941   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
19942 </p></blockquote>
19943
19944 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
19945
19946 <blockquote><p>
19947   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
19948   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
19949   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
19950   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
19951   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
19952   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
19953   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
19954 </p></blockquote>
19955
19956 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
19957
19958 <blockquote><p>
19959   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
19960 </p></blockquote>
19961
19962       </div>
19963       <div class="tags">
19964
19965
19966         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>.
19967
19968
19969       </div>
19970     </div>
19971     <div class="padding"></div>
19972
19973     <div class="entry">
19974       <div class="title">
19975         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
19976       </div>
19977       <div class="date">
19978         20th November 2010
19979       </div>
19980       <div class="body">
19981         <p>Answering
19982 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
19983 call from the Gnash project</a> for
19984 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
19985 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
19986 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
19987 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
19988 releases out more often.</p>
19989
19990 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
19991 I have considered setting up a <a
19992 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
19993 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
19994 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
19995 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
19996 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
19997 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
19998 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
19999 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
20000 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
20001 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
20002 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
20003 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
20004
20005       </div>
20006       <div class="tags">
20007
20008
20009         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>.
20010
20011
20012       </div>
20013     </div>
20014     <div class="padding"></div>
20015
20016     <div class="entry">
20017       <div class="title">
20018         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
20019       </div>
20020       <div class="date">
20021          9th November 2010
20022       </div>
20023       <div class="body">
20024         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
20025
20026 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
20027 3D linked in from
20028 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
20029 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
20030
20031       </div>
20032       <div class="tags">
20033
20034
20035         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>.
20036
20037
20038       </div>
20039     </div>
20040     <div class="padding"></div>
20041
20042     <div class="entry">
20043       <div class="title">
20044         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
20045       </div>
20046       <div class="date">
20047          7th November 2010
20048       </div>
20049       <div class="body">
20050         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
20051 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
20052 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
20053 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
20054 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
20055 working using this DVD.</p>
20056
20057 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
20058 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
20059 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
20060 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
20061 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
20062 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
20063 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
20064
20065 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
20066 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
20067 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
20068 Debian archive.</p>
20069
20070 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
20071 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
20072 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
20073 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
20074 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
20075 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
20076 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
20077 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
20078 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
20079 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
20080 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
20081 free X driver should work.</p>
20082
20083 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
20084 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
20085 DVD more useful again.</p>
20086
20087       </div>
20088       <div class="tags">
20089
20090
20091         Tags: <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>.
20092
20093
20094       </div>
20095     </div>
20096     <div class="padding"></div>
20097
20098     <div class="entry">
20099       <div class="title">
20100         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
20101       </div>
20102       <div class="date">
20103         24th October 2010
20104       </div>
20105       <div class="body">
20106         <p>Some updates.</p>
20107
20108 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
20109 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
20110 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
20111 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
20112 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
20113 :)</p>
20114
20115 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
20116 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
20117 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
20118 It is called
20119 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
20120 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
20121 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
20122 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
20123 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
20124 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
20125
20126 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
20127 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
20128 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
20129 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
20130 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
20131 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
20132 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
20133 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
20134 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
20135 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
20136
20137       </div>
20138       <div class="tags">
20139
20140
20141         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>.
20142
20143
20144       </div>
20145     </div>
20146     <div class="padding"></div>
20147
20148     <div class="entry">
20149       <div class="title">
20150         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
20151       </div>
20152       <div class="date">
20153         19th October 2010
20154       </div>
20155       <div class="body">
20156         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
20157 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
20158 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
20159 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
20160 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
20161 AVM2 flash files.</p>
20162
20163 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
20164 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
20165 following text:</P>
20166
20167 <p><blockquote>
20168
20169   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
20170   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
20171
20172   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
20173
20174   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
20175
20176   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
20177   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
20178   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
20179   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
20180   days. The project web page is available from
20181   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
20182   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
20183   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
20184
20185   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
20186   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
20187   to get this to happen.</p>
20188
20189   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
20190   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
20191
20192 </blockquote></p>
20193
20194 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
20195 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
20196 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
20197 :)</p>
20198
20199       </div>
20200       <div class="tags">
20201
20202
20203         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</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>.
20204
20205
20206       </div>
20207     </div>
20208     <div class="padding"></div>
20209
20210     <div class="entry">
20211       <div class="title">
20212         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
20213       </div>
20214       <div class="date">
20215          9th October 2010
20216       </div>
20217       <div class="body">
20218         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
20219 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
20220 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
20221 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
20222 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
20223 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
20224 robots.</p>
20225
20226 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
20227 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
20228 a few less important features too.</p>
20229
20230 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
20231 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
20232 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
20233 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
20234
20235 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
20236 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
20237 source or binary package:</p>
20238
20239 <p><ul>
20240 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
20241 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
20242 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
20243 </ul></p>
20244
20245 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
20246 please let me know.</p>
20247
20248       </div>
20249       <div class="tags">
20250
20251
20252         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
20253
20254
20255       </div>
20256     </div>
20257     <div class="padding"></div>
20258
20259     <div class="entry">
20260       <div class="title">
20261         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
20262       </div>
20263       <div class="date">
20264          3rd October 2010
20265       </div>
20266       <div class="body">
20267         <p><ul>
20268
20269 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
20270 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
20271
20272 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
20273 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
20274 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
20275
20276 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
20277 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
20278 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
20279 simple setup.
20280
20281 </ul></p>
20282
20283       </div>
20284       <div class="tags">
20285
20286
20287         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
20288
20289
20290       </div>
20291     </div>
20292     <div class="padding"></div>
20293
20294     <div class="entry">
20295       <div class="title">
20296         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
20297       </div>
20298       <div class="date">
20299          9th September 2010
20300       </div>
20301       <div class="body">
20302         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
20303 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
20304 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
20305 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
20306 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
20307 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
20308 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
20309 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
20310 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
20311
20312 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
20313 written:</p>
20314
20315 <blockquote>
20316 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
20317 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
20318 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
20319 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
20320 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
20321
20322 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
20323 standard.</p>
20324 </blockquote>
20325
20326 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
20327 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
20328 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
20329 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
20330
20331 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
20332 read
20333 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
20334 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
20335 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
20336 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
20337 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
20338 the issue.  The solution is to support the
20339 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
20340 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
20341 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
20342
20343       </div>
20344       <div class="tags">
20345
20346
20347         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</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/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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</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>.
20348
20349
20350       </div>
20351     </div>
20352     <div class="padding"></div>
20353
20354     <div class="entry">
20355       <div class="title">
20356         <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>
20357       </div>
20358       <div class="date">
20359          4th September 2010
20360       </div>
20361       <div class="body">
20362         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
20363 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
20364 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
20365 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
20366 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
20367 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
20368 installed.</p>
20369
20370 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
20371 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
20372 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
20373 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
20374 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
20375 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
20376 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
20377 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
20378 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
20379
20380 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
20381 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
20382 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
20383 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
20384 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
20385 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
20386 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
20387 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
20388 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
20389 pages they want to visit.</p>
20390
20391 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
20392 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
20393 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
20394 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
20395 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
20396 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
20397 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
20398 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
20399 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
20400 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
20401 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
20402
20403       </div>
20404       <div class="tags">
20405
20406
20407         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>.
20408
20409
20410       </div>
20411     </div>
20412     <div class="padding"></div>
20413
20414     <div class="entry">
20415       <div class="title">
20416         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
20417       </div>
20418       <div class="date">
20419          1st September 2010
20420       </div>
20421       <div class="body">
20422         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
20423 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
20424 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
20425 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
20426 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
20427 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
20428 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
20429 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
20430 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
20431 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
20432 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
20433 drive around.</p>
20434
20435 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
20436 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
20437
20438 <p><pre>
20439 use Spykee;
20440 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
20441 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
20442 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
20443 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
20444 $spykee->left();
20445 sleep 2;
20446 $spykee->right();
20447 sleep 2;
20448 $spykee->forward();
20449 sleep 2;
20450 $spykee->back();
20451 sleep 2;
20452 $spykee->stop();
20453 </pre></p>
20454
20455 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
20456 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
20457 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
20458 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
20459 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
20460 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
20461 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
20462 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
20463 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
20464 going. :).</p>
20465
20466 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
20467 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
20468 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
20469 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
20470
20471       </div>
20472       <div class="tags">
20473
20474
20475         Tags: <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/robot">robot</a>.
20476
20477
20478       </div>
20479     </div>
20480     <div class="padding"></div>
20481
20482     <div class="entry">
20483       <div class="title">
20484         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
20485       </div>
20486       <div class="date">
20487         30th August 2010
20488       </div>
20489       <div class="body">
20490         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
20491 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
20492 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
20493 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
20494 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
20495 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
20496 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
20497
20498 <pre>
20499 % ln foo bar
20500 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
20501 %
20502 </pre>
20503
20504 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
20505 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
20506 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
20507 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
20508 nevertheless. :)</p>
20509
20510 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
20511 git from
20512 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
20513
20514       </div>
20515       <div class="tags">
20516
20517
20518         Tags: <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>.
20519
20520
20521       </div>
20522     </div>
20523     <div class="padding"></div>
20524
20525     <div class="entry">
20526       <div class="title">
20527         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
20528       </div>
20529       <div class="date">
20530         26th August 2010
20531       </div>
20532       <div class="body">
20533         <p>My file system sematics program
20534 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
20535 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
20536 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
20537 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
20538 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
20539 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
20540 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
20541 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
20542 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
20543 script:</p>
20544
20545 <pre>
20546 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
20547   mode_t retval = 0;
20548   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
20549   if (-1 != fd) {
20550     unlink(name);
20551     struct stat statbuf;
20552     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
20553       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
20554     }
20555     close(fd);
20556   }
20557   return retval;
20558 }
20559
20560 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
20561 int test_umask(void) {
20562   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
20563
20564   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
20565   mode_t newmode;
20566   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
20567     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
20568            newmode);
20569   }
20570   umask(007);
20571   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
20572     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
20573            newmode);
20574   }
20575
20576   umask (orig_umask);
20577   return 0;
20578 }
20579
20580 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
20581   [...]
20582   test_umask();
20583   return 0;
20584 }
20585 </pre>
20586
20587 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
20588
20589 <pre>
20590 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
20591 info: testing symlink creation
20592 info: testing subdirectory creation
20593 info: testing fcntl locking
20594   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
20595   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
20596   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
20597   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
20598   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
20599   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
20600 info: testing umask effect on file creation
20601 </pre>
20602
20603 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
20604 result:</p>
20605
20606 <pre>
20607 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
20608 info: testing symlink creation
20609 info: testing subdirectory creation
20610 info: testing fcntl locking
20611   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
20612   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
20613   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
20614   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
20615   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
20616   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
20617 info: testing umask effect on file creation
20618   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
20619   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
20620 </pre>
20621
20622 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
20623 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
20624 directory.</p>
20625
20626 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
20627 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
20628
20629 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
20630 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
20631 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
20632
20633       </div>
20634       <div class="tags">
20635
20636
20637         Tags: <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>.
20638
20639
20640       </div>
20641     </div>
20642     <div class="padding"></div>
20643
20644     <div class="entry">
20645       <div class="title">
20646         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
20647       </div>
20648       <div class="date">
20649         15th August 2010
20650       </div>
20651       <div class="body">
20652         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
20653 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
20654 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
20655 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
20656 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
20657 long time.</p>
20658
20659       </div>
20660       <div class="tags">
20661
20662
20663         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</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>.
20664
20665
20666       </div>
20667     </div>
20668     <div class="padding"></div>
20669
20670     <div class="entry">
20671       <div class="title">
20672         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
20673       </div>
20674       <div class="date">
20675          9th August 2010
20676       </div>
20677       <div class="body">
20678         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
20679 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
20680 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
20681 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
20682 generated configuration.</p>
20683
20684 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
20685 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
20686 without any manual configuration.</p>
20687
20688 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
20689 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
20690 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
20691 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
20692 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
20693 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
20694 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
20695 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
20696 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
20697 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
20698 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
20699 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
20700 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
20701 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
20702 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
20703 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
20704 use.</p>
20705
20706 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
20707 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
20708 working properly out of the box:</p>
20709
20710 <ul>
20711 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
20712 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
20713 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
20714 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
20715 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
20716 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
20717 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
20718 </ul>
20719
20720 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
20721
20722 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
20723 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
20724 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
20725 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
20726 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
20727
20728 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
20729 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
20730 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
20731 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
20732 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
20733 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
20734 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
20735 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
20736
20737 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
20738 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
20739 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
20740 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
20741 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
20742 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
20743 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
20744 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
20745 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
20746 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
20747 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
20748 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
20749 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
20750 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
20751 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
20752 current DNS domain is used.</p>
20753
20754 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
20755 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
20756 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
20757 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
20758 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
20759 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
20760 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
20761 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
20762 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
20763 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
20764 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
20765 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
20766 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
20767
20768 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
20769 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
20770 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
20771 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
20772 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
20773 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
20774 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
20775 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
20776 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
20777 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
20778 do for now. :)</p>
20779
20780 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
20781 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
20782 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
20783 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
20784 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
20785 yet.</p>
20786
20787 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
20788 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20789
20790 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
20791 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
20792 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
20793 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
20794
20795       </div>
20796       <div class="tags">
20797
20798
20799         Tags: <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>.
20800
20801
20802       </div>
20803     </div>
20804     <div class="padding"></div>
20805
20806     <div class="entry">
20807       <div class="title">
20808         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
20809       </div>
20810       <div class="date">
20811          8th August 2010
20812       </div>
20813       <div class="body">
20814         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
20815 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
20816 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
20817 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
20818 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
20819 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
20820 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
20821
20822 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
20823 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
20824 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
20825 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
20826 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
20827 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
20828 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
20829
20830 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
20831 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
20832 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
20833 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
20834 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
20835
20836 <pre>
20837 /*
20838  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
20839  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
20840  * directory.
20841  * License: GPL v2 or later
20842  *
20843  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
20844  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
20845 */
20846
20847 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
20848 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
20849 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
20850
20851 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
20852
20853 #include &lt;errno.h>
20854 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
20855 #include &lt;stdio.h>
20856 #include &lt;string.h>
20857 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
20858 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
20859 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
20860 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
20861 #include &lt;unistd.h>
20862
20863 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
20864 /*
20865  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
20866  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
20867  * below.
20868  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
20869  */
20870 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
20871 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
20872   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
20873 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
20874   char *zErrMsg;
20875   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
20876   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
20877   unlink(name);
20878   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
20879   if( rc ){
20880     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
20881     sqlite3_close(db);
20882     return -1;
20883   }
20884
20885   /* create tables */
20886   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
20887   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
20888     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
20889     sqlite3_close(db);
20890     return -1;
20891   }
20892   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
20893   sqlite3_close(db);
20894   return 0;
20895 }
20896 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
20897
20898 /*
20899  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
20900  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
20901  * done in the sqlite3 library.
20902  * See also
20903  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
20904  * POSIX specification
20905  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
20906  */
20907 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
20908   struct flock fl;
20909   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
20910   unlink(name);
20911   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
20912   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
20913
20914   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
20915   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
20916   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
20917   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
20918   fl.l_len    = 1;
20919   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
20920   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
20921
20922   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
20923   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
20924   fl.l_len    = 510;
20925   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
20926   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
20927
20928   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
20929   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
20930   fl.l_len    = 1;
20931   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
20932   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
20933
20934   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
20935   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
20936   fl.l_len    = 1;
20937   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
20938   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
20939
20940   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
20941   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
20942   fl.l_len    = 510;
20943   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
20944
20945   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
20946   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
20947   fl.l_len    = 2;
20948   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
20949   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
20950
20951   close(fd);
20952   return 0;
20953 }
20954
20955 /*
20956  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
20957  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
20958  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
20959  * slowing down file operations.
20960  */
20961 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
20962 #define LEVELS 5
20963   char *path = strdup("test");
20964   char *dirs[LEVELS];
20965   int level;
20966   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
20967   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
20968     char *newpath = NULL;
20969     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
20970       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
20971              path, strerror(errno));
20972       break;
20973     }
20974     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
20975     free(path);
20976     path = newpath;
20977   }
20978   return 0;
20979 }
20980
20981 /*
20982  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
20983  * KDE.
20984  */
20985 int test_symlinks(void) {
20986   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
20987   unlink("symlink");
20988   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
20989     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
20990   return 0;
20991 }
20992
20993 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
20994   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
20995   test_symlinks();
20996   test_subdirectory_creation();
20997 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
20998   test_sqlite_open();
20999 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
21000   test_gcompris_locking();
21001   return 0;
21002 }
21003 </pre>
21004
21005 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
21006 this:</p>
21007
21008 <pre>
21009 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
21010 info: testing symlink creation
21011 info: testing subdirectory creation
21012 info: sqlite worked
21013 info: testing fcntl locking
21014   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
21015   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
21016   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
21017   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
21018   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
21019   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
21020 </pre>
21021
21022 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
21023 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
21024 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
21025 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
21026 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
21027 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
21028 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
21029 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
21030
21031 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
21032 it. :)</p>
21033
21034 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
21035 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
21036 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
21037
21038       </div>
21039       <div class="tags">
21040
21041
21042         Tags: <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>.
21043
21044
21045       </div>
21046     </div>
21047     <div class="padding"></div>
21048
21049     <div class="entry">
21050       <div class="title">
21051         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
21052       </div>
21053       <div class="date">
21054          7th August 2010
21055       </div>
21056       <div class="body">
21057         <p>A few days ago, I
21058 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
21059 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
21060 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
21061 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
21062 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
21063 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
21064 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
21065 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
21066 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
21067
21068 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
21069 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
21070 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
21071 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
21072 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
21073 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
21074 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
21075 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
21076 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
21077 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
21078 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
21079 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
21080 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
21081 gave it a IP address.</p>
21082
21083 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
21084 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
21085 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
21086 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
21087 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
21088 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
21089 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
21090 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
21091
21092 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
21093 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
21094 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
21095 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
21096 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
21097 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
21098
21099 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
21100 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
21101 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
21102 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
21103 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
21104 with UID and GID values.</p>
21105
21106 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
21107 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21108
21109       </div>
21110       <div class="tags">
21111
21112
21113         Tags: <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>.
21114
21115
21116       </div>
21117     </div>
21118     <div class="padding"></div>
21119
21120     <div class="entry">
21121       <div class="title">
21122         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
21123       </div>
21124       <div class="date">
21125          3rd August 2010
21126       </div>
21127       <div class="body">
21128         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
21129 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
21130 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
21131 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
21132 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
21133 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
21134 servers.</p>
21135
21136 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
21137 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
21138 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
21139 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
21140 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
21141 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
21142 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
21143 .uio.no.</p>
21144
21145 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
21146 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
21147 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
21148 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
21149 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
21150 university servers.</p>
21151
21152 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
21153 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
21154 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
21155 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
21156 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
21157 uses.</p>
21158
21159       </div>
21160       <div class="tags">
21161
21162
21163         Tags: <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>.
21164
21165
21166       </div>
21167     </div>
21168     <div class="padding"></div>
21169
21170     <div class="entry">
21171       <div class="title">
21172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
21173       </div>
21174       <div class="date">
21175         27th July 2010
21176       </div>
21177       <div class="body">
21178         <p>I discovered this while doing
21179 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
21180 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
21181 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
21182 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
21183 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
21184
21185 <p>An example is from todays
21186 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
21187 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
21188 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
21189 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
21190 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
21191 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
21192 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
21193
21194 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
21195
21196 <blockquote><pre>
21197 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
21198  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
21199   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
21200 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
21201  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
21202 </pre></blockquote>
21203
21204 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
21205 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
21206 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
21207 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
21208 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
21209 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
21210 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
21211 of dependency loops.</p>
21212
21213 <p>Thanks to
21214 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
21215 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
21216 dependencies
21217 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
21218 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
21219
21220 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
21221 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
21222 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
21223 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
21224 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
21225 it.</p>
21226
21227       </div>
21228       <div class="tags">
21229
21230
21231         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>.
21232
21233
21234       </div>
21235     </div>
21236     <div class="padding"></div>
21237
21238     <div class="entry">
21239       <div class="title">
21240         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
21241       </div>
21242       <div class="date">
21243         27th July 2010
21244       </div>
21245       <div class="body">
21246         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
21247 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
21248 completed.</p>
21249
21250 <blockquote>
21251 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
21252 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
21253 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
21254 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
21255 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
21256 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
21257 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
21258 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
21259
21260 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
21261 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
21262 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
21263
21264 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
21265 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
21266 much.</p>
21267
21268 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
21269
21270 <ul>
21271 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
21272 <ul>
21273   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
21274          combination with some new artwork
21275   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
21276   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
21277   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
21278   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
21279   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
21280   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
21281   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
21282   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
21283   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
21284 </ul></li>
21285 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
21286     Enabled for:
21287 <ul>
21288   <li>PAM
21289   <li>LDAP
21290   <li>IMAP
21291   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
21292 </ul>
21293 </li>
21294 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
21295 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
21296     fetched from LDAP.</li>
21297 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
21298 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
21299 </ul>
21300 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
21301
21302 <ul>
21303 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
21304     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
21305     for testing.</li>
21306 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
21307     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
21308     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
21309 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
21310 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
21311 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
21312 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
21313     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
21314 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
21315     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
21316     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
21317 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
21318     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
21319     and help out with translations.</li>
21320 </ul>
21321
21322 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
21323
21324 <ul>
21325 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
21326 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
21327 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
21328 </ul>
21329 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
21330
21331 <ul>
21332 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
21333 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
21334 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
21335 </ul>
21336
21337 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
21338 get closer to the final release.</p>
21339
21340 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
21341
21342 <ul>
21343 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
21344 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
21345 </ul>
21346
21347 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
21348 <ul>
21349 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
21350 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
21351 </ul>
21352 <p>How to report bugs:
21353 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
21354
21355 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
21356 </blockquote>
21357
21358       </div>
21359       <div class="tags">
21360
21361
21362         Tags: <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>.
21363
21364
21365       </div>
21366     </div>
21367     <div class="padding"></div>
21368
21369     <div class="entry">
21370       <div class="title">
21371         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
21372       </div>
21373       <div class="date">
21374         25th July 2010
21375       </div>
21376       <div class="body">
21377         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
21378 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
21379 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
21380 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
21381 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
21382
21383 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
21384 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
21385 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
21386 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
21387 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
21388 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
21389 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
21390
21391 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
21392 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
21393 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
21394 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
21395 up. :)</p>
21396
21397 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
21398 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
21399 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
21400
21401 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
21402 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
21403 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
21404 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
21405 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
21406 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
21407 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
21408 release another day.</p>
21409
21410 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
21411 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21412
21413       </div>
21414       <div class="tags">
21415
21416
21417         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
21418
21419
21420       </div>
21421     </div>
21422     <div class="padding"></div>
21423
21424     <div class="entry">
21425       <div class="title">
21426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
21427       </div>
21428       <div class="date">
21429         18th July 2010
21430       </div>
21431       <div class="body">
21432         <p>Thanks to
21433 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
21434 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
21435 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
21436 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
21437 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
21438 only available from the development server, until more experience is
21439 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
21440
21441 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
21442 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
21443 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
21444 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
21445 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
21446 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
21447 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
21448
21449       </div>
21450       <div class="tags">
21451
21452
21453         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
21454
21455
21456       </div>
21457     </div>
21458     <div class="padding"></div>
21459
21460     <div class="entry">
21461       <div class="title">
21462         <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>
21463       </div>
21464       <div class="date">
21465         17th July 2010
21466       </div>
21467       <div class="body">
21468         <p>This is a
21469 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
21470 on my
21471 <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
21472 work</a> on
21473 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
21474 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
21475
21476 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
21477 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
21478 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
21479 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
21480
21481 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
21482 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
21483 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
21484
21485 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
21486
21487 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
21488 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
21489 the web.
21490
21491 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
21492 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
21493 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
21494 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
21495 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
21496 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
21497
21498 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
21499 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
21500 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
21501 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
21502 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
21503 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
21504 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
21505 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
21506 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
21507 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
21508 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
21509 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
21510 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
21511 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
21512 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
21513 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
21514
21515 <blockquote><pre>
21516 ldapsearch -h ldap \
21517   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
21518   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
21519   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
21520   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
21521   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
21522   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
21523
21524 ldapsearch -h ldap \
21525   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
21526   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
21527   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
21528   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
21529   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
21530 </pre></blockquote>
21531
21532 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
21533 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
21534 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
21535 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21536 also exist.</p>
21537
21538 <blockquote><pre>
21539 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21540 objectclass: top
21541 objectclass: dnsdomain
21542 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
21543 dc: tjener
21544 arecord: 10.0.2.2
21545 associateddomain: tjener.intern
21546
21547 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21548 objectclass: top
21549 objectclass: dnsdomain2
21550 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
21551 dc: 2
21552 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
21553 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
21554 </pre></blockquote>
21555
21556 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
21557 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
21558 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
21559 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
21560 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
21561 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
21562 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
21563 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
21564 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
21565 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
21566 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
21567 instead.</p>
21568
21569 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
21570 like this:</p>
21571
21572 <blockquote><pre>
21573 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
21574   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
21575   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
21576   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
21577   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
21578   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
21579
21580 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
21581   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
21582 </pre></blockquote>
21583
21584 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
21585 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
21586 reverse lookups.</p>
21587
21588 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
21589 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
21590 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
21591 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
21592
21593 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
21594 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
21595 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
21596
21597 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
21598 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
21599 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
21600 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
21601 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
21602
21603 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
21604 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
21605 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
21606 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
21607 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
21608
21609 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
21610 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
21611 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
21612 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
21613 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
21614 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
21615
21616 <blockquote><pre>
21617 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
21618     SUP top
21619     AUXILIARY
21620     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
21621           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
21622           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
21623           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
21624           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
21625     ))
21626 </pre></blockquote>
21627
21628 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
21629 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
21630 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
21631 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
21632 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
21633 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
21634
21635 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
21636
21637 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
21638 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
21639 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
21640 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
21641 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
21642
21643 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
21644 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
21645 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
21646 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
21647
21648 <blockquote><pre>
21649 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
21650 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
21651 </pre></blockquote>
21652
21653 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
21654 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
21655 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
21656 search result is this entry:</p>
21657
21658 <blockquote><pre>
21659 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21660 cn: dhcp
21661 objectClass: top
21662 objectClass: dhcpServer
21663 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21664 </pre></blockquote>
21665
21666 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
21667 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
21668 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
21669 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
21670 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
21671 The search result is this entry:</p>
21672
21673 <blockquote><pre>
21674 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21675 cn: DHCP Config
21676 objectClass: top
21677 objectClass: dhcpService
21678 objectClass: dhcpOptions
21679 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21680 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
21681 dhcpStatements: authoritative
21682 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
21683 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
21684 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
21685 </pre></blockquote>
21686
21687 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
21688 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
21689 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
21690 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
21691 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
21692 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
21693 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
21694 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
21695 related computer objects.</p>
21696
21697 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
21698 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
21699 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
21700 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
21701 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
21702 like:</p>
21703
21704 <blockquote><pre>
21705 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21706 cn: hostname
21707 objectClass: top
21708 objectClass: dhcpHost
21709 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
21710 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
21711 </pre></blockquote>
21712
21713 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
21714 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
21715 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
21716 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
21717 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
21718 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
21719 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
21720 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
21721 structural object class.
21722
21723 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
21724
21725 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
21726 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
21727 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
21728 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
21729 in the configuration.</p>
21730
21731 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
21732 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
21733 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
21734 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
21735 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
21736 structure.</p>
21737
21738 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
21739 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
21740
21741 <blockquote><pre>
21742 ou=services
21743   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
21744     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
21745     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
21746       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
21747         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
21748     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
21749       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
21750         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
21751     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
21752       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
21753 </pre></blockquote>
21754
21755 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
21756 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
21757 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
21758 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
21759
21760 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
21761 like this:</p>
21762
21763 <blockquote><pre>
21764 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21765 dc: hostname
21766 objectClass: top
21767 objectClass: dhcpHost
21768 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
21769 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
21770 associateddomain: hostname.intern
21771 arecord: 10.11.12.13
21772 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
21773 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
21774 </pre></blockquote>
21775
21776 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
21777 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
21778 auxiliary object class.</p>
21779
21780       </div>
21781       <div class="tags">
21782
21783
21784         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>.
21785
21786
21787       </div>
21788     </div>
21789     <div class="padding"></div>
21790
21791     <div class="entry">
21792       <div class="title">
21793         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
21794       </div>
21795       <div class="date">
21796         14th July 2010
21797       </div>
21798       <div class="body">
21799         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
21800 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
21801 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
21802 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
21803 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
21804
21805 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
21806 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
21807
21808 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
21809 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
21810 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
21811 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
21812 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
21813 to a slave DNS server.</p>
21814
21815 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
21816 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
21817 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
21818 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
21819 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
21820 seem to work.</p>
21821
21822 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
21823 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
21824 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
21825 this:</p>
21826
21827 <blockquote><pre>
21828   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21829   cn: hostname
21830   objectClass: dhcphost
21831   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
21832   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
21833   associateddomain: hostname.intern
21834   arecord: 10.11.12.13
21835   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
21836   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
21837   ldapconfigsound: Y
21838 </pre></blockquote>
21839
21840 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
21841 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
21842 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
21843 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
21844
21845 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
21846 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
21847 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
21848 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
21849 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
21850 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
21851 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
21852 might be a good place to put it.</p>
21853
21854 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21855 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21856
21857       </div>
21858       <div class="tags">
21859
21860
21861         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>.
21862
21863
21864       </div>
21865     </div>
21866     <div class="padding"></div>
21867
21868     <div class="entry">
21869       <div class="title">
21870         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
21871       </div>
21872       <div class="date">
21873         11th July 2010
21874       </div>
21875       <div class="body">
21876         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
21877 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
21878 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
21879 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
21880
21881 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
21882 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
21883 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
21884 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
21885 LTSP clients.</p>
21886
21887 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
21888 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
21889 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
21890
21891 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
21892 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
21893 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
21894
21895 <blockquote><pre>
21896 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
21897 #
21898 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
21899 #
21900 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
21901 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
21902 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
21903 #
21904 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
21905 # existence of attribute names.
21906 #
21907 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
21908 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
21909 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
21910 #
21911 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
21912 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
21913 #
21914 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
21915 #     SUP top
21916 #     AUXILIARY
21917 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
21918
21919 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
21920 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
21921     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
21922     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
21923         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
21924         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
21925             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
21926             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
21927             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
21928             # bass value on to clients
21929             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
21930         done
21931     done
21932 fi
21933 </pre></blockquote>
21934
21935 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
21936 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
21937 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
21938 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
21939 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
21940
21941 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21942 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21943
21944 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
21945 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
21946 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
21947 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
21948 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
21949 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
21950
21951       </div>
21952       <div class="tags">
21953
21954
21955         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>.
21956
21957
21958       </div>
21959     </div>
21960     <div class="padding"></div>
21961
21962     <div class="entry">
21963       <div class="title">
21964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
21965       </div>
21966       <div class="date">
21967          9th July 2010
21968       </div>
21969       <div class="body">
21970         <p>Since
21971 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
21972 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
21973 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
21974 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
21975 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
21976 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
21977 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
21978 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
21979 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
21980 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
21981 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
21982 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
21983 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
21984
21985       </div>
21986       <div class="tags">
21987
21988
21989         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>.
21990
21991
21992       </div>
21993     </div>
21994     <div class="padding"></div>
21995
21996     <div class="entry">
21997       <div class="title">
21998         <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>
21999       </div>
22000       <div class="date">
22001          3rd July 2010
22002       </div>
22003       <div class="body">
22004         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
22005 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
22006 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
22007 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
22008 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
22009 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
22010 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
22011 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
22012
22013 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
22014 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
22015 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
22016 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
22017 publish the difference.</p>
22018
22019 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
22020
22021 <blockquote><p>
22022   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
22023   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
22024   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
22025   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
22026   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
22027   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
22028   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
22029   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
22030 </p></blockquote>
22031
22032 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
22033
22034 <blockquote><p>
22035   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
22036   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
22037   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
22038   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
22039   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
22040   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
22041   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
22042   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
22043   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
22044   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
22045   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
22046   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
22047   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
22048   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
22049   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
22050   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
22051   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
22052   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
22053   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
22054   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
22055 </p></blockquote>
22056
22057 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
22058
22059 <blockquote><p>
22060   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
22061   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
22062   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
22063   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
22064   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
22065   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
22066   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
22067   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
22068   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
22069   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
22070   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
22071   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
22072   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
22073   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
22074   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
22075   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
22076   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
22077   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
22078   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
22079   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
22080   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
22081 </p></blockquote>
22082
22083 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
22084
22085 <blockquote><p>
22086   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
22087   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
22088   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
22089 </p></blockquote>
22090
22091 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
22092 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
22093 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
22094 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
22095 the difference somewhat.
22096
22097       </div>
22098       <div class="tags">
22099
22100
22101         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>.
22102
22103
22104       </div>
22105     </div>
22106     <div class="padding"></div>
22107
22108     <div class="entry">
22109       <div class="title">
22110         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
22111       </div>
22112       <div class="date">
22113          1st July 2010
22114       </div>
22115       <div class="body">
22116         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
22117 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
22118 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
22119 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
22120 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
22121 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
22122 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
22123 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
22124 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
22125
22126 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
22127
22128 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
22129 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
22130 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
22131 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
22132 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
22133 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
22134 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
22135 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
22136 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
22137 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
22138 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
22139 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
22140 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
22141 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
22142 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
22143
22144 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
22145
22146 <blockquote><pre>
22147 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
22148 </pre></blockquote>
22149
22150 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
22151 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
22152 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
22153 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
22154 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
22155 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
22156 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
22157 on how to get this working.</p>
22158
22159 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
22160 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
22161 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
22162 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
22163 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
22164 instructions I found in the
22165 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
22166 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
22167
22168 <blockquote><pre>
22169         debug-level             0
22170         reload-count            unlimited
22171         paranoia                no
22172
22173         enable-cache            passwd          yes
22174         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
22175         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
22176         suggested-size          passwd          211
22177         check-files             passwd          yes
22178         persistent              passwd          yes
22179         shared                  passwd          yes
22180         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
22181         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
22182
22183         enable-cache            group           yes
22184         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
22185         negative-time-to-live   group           20
22186         suggested-size          group           211
22187         check-files             group           yes
22188         persistent              group           yes
22189         shared                  group           yes
22190         max-db-size             group           33554432
22191         auto-propagate          group           yes
22192
22193         enable-cache            hosts           no
22194         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
22195         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
22196         suggested-size          hosts           211
22197         check-files             hosts           yes
22198         persistent              hosts           yes
22199         shared                  hosts           yes
22200         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
22201
22202         enable-cache            services        yes
22203         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
22204         negative-time-to-live   services        20
22205         suggested-size          services        211
22206         check-files             services        yes
22207         persistent              services        yes
22208         shared                  services        yes
22209         max-db-size             services        33554432
22210 </pre></blockquote>
22211
22212 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
22213 automatically like the one provided in
22214 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
22215 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
22216 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
22217 look like this:</p>
22218
22219 <blockquote><pre>
22220 passwd:         files ldap
22221 group:          files ldap
22222 shadow:         files ldap
22223 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
22224 networks:       files
22225 protocols:      files
22226 services:       files
22227 ethers:         files
22228 rpc:            files
22229 netgroup:       files ldap
22230 </pre></blockquote>
22231
22232 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
22233 shadow and netgroup.</p>
22234
22235 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
22236 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
22237 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
22238 attributes cached.
22239
22240 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
22241   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
22242
22243 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
22244 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
22245 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
22246 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
22247 discovered sssd.</p>
22248
22249 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
22250
22251 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
22252 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
22253 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
22254 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
22255 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
22256 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
22257 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
22258 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
22259 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
22260 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
22261 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
22262 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
22263 version 1.2 is now in testing.
22264
22265 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
22266 roaming setup I want</p>
22267
22268 <blockquote><pre>
22269 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
22270 </pre></blockquote>
22271
22272 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
22273 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
22274
22275 <blockquote><pre>
22276 [sssd]
22277 config_file_version = 2
22278 reconnection_retries = 3
22279 sbus_timeout = 30
22280 services = nss, pam
22281 domains = INTERN
22282
22283 [nss]
22284 filter_groups = root
22285 filter_users = root
22286 reconnection_retries = 3
22287
22288 [pam]
22289 reconnection_retries = 3
22290
22291 [domain/INTERN]
22292 enumerate = false
22293 cache_credentials = true
22294
22295 id_provider = ldap
22296 auth_provider = ldap
22297 chpass_provider = ldap
22298
22299 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
22300 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
22301 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
22302 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
22303 </pre></blockquote>
22304
22305 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
22306 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
22307
22308 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
22309 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
22310 modify it manually.</p>
22311
22312 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22313 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22314
22315       </div>
22316       <div class="tags">
22317
22318
22319         Tags: <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>.
22320
22321
22322       </div>
22323     </div>
22324     <div class="padding"></div>
22325
22326     <div class="entry">
22327       <div class="title">
22328         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
22329       </div>
22330       <div class="date">
22331         28th June 2010
22332       </div>
22333       <div class="body">
22334         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
22335 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
22336 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
22337 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
22338 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
22339 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
22340 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
22341 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
22342 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
22343 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
22344
22345 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
22346 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
22347 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
22348 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
22349 released.</p>
22350
22351 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
22352 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
22353 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
22354 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
22355
22356 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
22357 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22358
22359 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
22360 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
22361 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
22362 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
22363 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
22364
22365       </div>
22366       <div class="tags">
22367
22368
22369         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>.
22370
22371
22372       </div>
22373     </div>
22374     <div class="padding"></div>
22375
22376     <div class="entry">
22377       <div class="title">
22378         <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>
22379       </div>
22380       <div class="date">
22381         24th June 2010
22382       </div>
22383       <div class="body">
22384         <p>A while back, I
22385 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
22386 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
22387 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
22388 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
22389
22390 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
22391 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
22392 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
22393 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
22394
22395 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
22396 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
22397 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
22398 Debian Edu.</p>
22399
22400 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
22401 the
22402 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
22403 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
22404 available today from IETF.</p>
22405
22406 <pre>
22407 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
22408 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
22409 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
22410  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
22411         NAME 'dhcpHost'
22412         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
22413 -       SUP top
22414 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
22415         MUST cn
22416         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
22417         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
22418 </pre>
22419
22420 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
22421 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
22422 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
22423
22424 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22425 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22426
22427       </div>
22428       <div class="tags">
22429
22430
22431         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>.
22432
22433
22434       </div>
22435     </div>
22436     <div class="padding"></div>
22437
22438     <div class="entry">
22439       <div class="title">
22440         <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>
22441       </div>
22442       <div class="date">
22443         16th June 2010
22444       </div>
22445       <div class="body">
22446         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
22447 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
22448 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
22449 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
22450 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
22451 this:
22452
22453 <blockquote><pre>
22454 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
22455 tasksel --new-install
22456 </pre></blockquote>
22457
22458 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
22459 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
22460 any output what so ever.
22461
22462 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
22463 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
22464 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
22465 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
22466 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
22467 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
22468 code like this:
22469
22470 <blockquote><pre>
22471 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
22472 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
22473 $cmd
22474 </pre></blockquote>
22475
22476 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
22477 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
22478 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
22479 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
22480 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
22481 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
22482 installation.</p>
22483
22484 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
22485 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
22486 like this.</p>
22487
22488       </div>
22489       <div class="tags">
22490
22491
22492         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>.
22493
22494
22495       </div>
22496     </div>
22497     <div class="padding"></div>
22498
22499     <div class="entry">
22500       <div class="title">
22501         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
22502       </div>
22503       <div class="date">
22504         13th June 2010
22505       </div>
22506       <div class="body">
22507         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
22508 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
22509 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
22510 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
22511 pages.</p>
22512
22513 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
22514 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
22515 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
22516 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
22517 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
22518 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
22519 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
22520 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
22521 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
22522 see how the project is doing.</p>
22523
22524 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
22525 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
22526 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
22527 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
22528 Windows.  This is great.</p>
22529
22530       </div>
22531       <div class="tags">
22532
22533
22534         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
22535
22536
22537       </div>
22538     </div>
22539     <div class="padding"></div>
22540
22541     <div class="entry">
22542       <div class="title">
22543         <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>
22544       </div>
22545       <div class="date">
22546         13th June 2010
22547       </div>
22548       <div class="body">
22549         <p>My
22550 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
22551 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
22552 finally made the upgrade logs available from
22553 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
22554 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
22555 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
22556 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
22557
22558 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
22559 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
22560 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
22561 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
22562 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
22563 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
22564 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
22565 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
22566
22567 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
22568 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
22569 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
22570 too surprising.</p>
22571
22572 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
22573 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
22574 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
22575 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
22576 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
22577 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
22578 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
22579 continue.</p>
22580
22581 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
22582 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
22583   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
22584   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
22585   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
22586   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
22587   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
22588   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
22589   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
22590   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
22591   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
22592   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
22593   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
22594   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
22595   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
22596   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
22597   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
22598   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
22599   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
22600   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
22601   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
22602   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
22603   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
22604   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
22605   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
22606   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
22607   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
22608   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
22609   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
22610   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
22611
22612 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
22613
22614 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
22615   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
22616   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
22617   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
22618   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
22619   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
22620   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
22621   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
22622   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
22623   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
22624   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
22625   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
22626   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
22627   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
22628   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
22629   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
22630   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
22631   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
22632   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
22633   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
22634   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
22635   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
22636   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
22637   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
22638   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
22639   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
22640   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
22641   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
22642   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
22643   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
22644   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
22645   zip</p>
22646
22647 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
22648
22649 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
22650   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
22651   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
22652   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
22653   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
22654   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
22655   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
22656   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
22657   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
22658   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
22659   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
22660   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
22661   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
22662   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
22663   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
22664   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
22665   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
22666   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
22667   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
22668   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
22669   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
22670   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
22671   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
22672   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
22673   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
22674   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
22675   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
22676   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
22677
22678 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
22679 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
22680   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
22681   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
22682   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
22683   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
22684   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
22685   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
22686   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
22687   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
22688   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
22689   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
22690   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
22691   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
22692   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
22693   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
22694   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
22695   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
22696   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
22697   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
22698   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
22699   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
22700   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
22701   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
22702   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
22703   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
22704   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
22705   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
22706   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
22707   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
22708   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
22709   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
22710   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
22711   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
22712   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
22713   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
22714   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
22715   xulrunner-1.9</p>
22716
22717
22718       </div>
22719       <div class="tags">
22720
22721
22722         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>.
22723
22724
22725       </div>
22726     </div>
22727     <div class="padding"></div>
22728
22729     <div class="entry">
22730       <div class="title">
22731         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
22732       </div>
22733       <div class="date">
22734         11th June 2010
22735       </div>
22736       <div class="body">
22737         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
22738 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
22739 have been discovered and reported in the process
22740 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
22741 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
22742 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
22743 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
22744 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
22745
22746 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
22747 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
22748 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
22749 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
22750 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
22751 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
22752
22753 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
22754 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
22755 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
22756 is created.  The bug report
22757 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
22758 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
22759 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
22760 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
22761 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
22762 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
22763 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
22764 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
22765 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
22766 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
22767 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
22768 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
22769 Debian Squeeze.</p>
22770
22771 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
22772 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
22773 trick:</p>
22774
22775 <blockquote><pre>
22776 #!/bin/sh
22777 set -ex
22778
22779 if [ "$1" ] ; then
22780     desktop=$1
22781 else
22782     desktop=gnome
22783 fi
22784
22785 from=lenny
22786 to=squeeze
22787
22788 exec &lt; /dev/null
22789 unset LANG
22790 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
22791 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
22792 fuser -mv .
22793 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
22794 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
22795 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
22796 #!/bin/sh
22797 exit 101
22798 EOF
22799 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
22800 exit_cleanup() {
22801     umount $tmpdir/proc
22802 }
22803 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
22804 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
22805 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
22806
22807 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
22808
22809 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
22810 # to return the correct answers.
22811 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
22812     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
22813
22814 # Include the desktop and laptop task
22815 for test in desktop laptop ; do
22816     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
22817 #!/bin/sh
22818 exit 2
22819 EOF
22820     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
22821 done
22822
22823 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
22824 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
22825 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
22826 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
22827
22828 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
22829 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
22830 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
22831 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
22832 fuser -mv
22833 </pre></blockquote>
22834
22835 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
22836 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
22837 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
22838 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
22839 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
22840 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
22841
22842 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
22843 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
22844 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
22845 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
22846 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
22847 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
22848 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
22849
22850 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
22851 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
22852 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
22853 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
22854 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
22855 packages.</p>
22856
22857       </div>
22858       <div class="tags">
22859
22860
22861         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>.
22862
22863
22864       </div>
22865     </div>
22866     <div class="padding"></div>
22867
22868     <div class="entry">
22869       <div class="title">
22870         <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>
22871       </div>
22872       <div class="date">
22873          6th June 2010
22874       </div>
22875       <div class="body">
22876         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
22877 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
22878 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
22879 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
22880 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
22881 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
22882 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
22883
22884 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
22885 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
22886 COLUMNS):</p>
22887
22888 <blockquote><pre>
22889 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
22890 previous=N
22891 PREVLEVEL=
22892 RUNLEVEL=
22893 runlevel=S
22894 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
22895 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
22896 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
22897 </pre></blockquote>
22898
22899 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
22900 script.</p>
22901
22902 <blockquote><pre>
22903 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
22904 previous=N
22905 PREVLEVEL=N
22906 RUNLEVEL=S
22907 runlevel=S
22908 </pre></blockquote>
22909
22910 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
22911 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
22912 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
22913
22914 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
22915 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
22916 choice.</p>
22917
22918       </div>
22919       <div class="tags">
22920
22921
22922         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>.
22923
22924
22925       </div>
22926     </div>
22927     <div class="padding"></div>
22928
22929     <div class="entry">
22930       <div class="title">
22931         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
22932       </div>
22933       <div class="date">
22934          6th June 2010
22935       </div>
22936       <div class="body">
22937         <p>Via the
22938 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
22939 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
22940 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
22941 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
22942 following the standards wars of today.</p>
22943
22944       </div>
22945       <div class="tags">
22946
22947
22948         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>.
22949
22950
22951       </div>
22952     </div>
22953     <div class="padding"></div>
22954
22955     <div class="entry">
22956       <div class="title">
22957         <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>
22958       </div>
22959       <div class="date">
22960          3rd June 2010
22961       </div>
22962       <div class="body">
22963         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
22964 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
22965 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
22966 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
22967 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
22968
22969 <blockquote><pre>
22970 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
22971   vendor                    count
22972   Dell Computer Corporation     1
22973     PowerEdge 1750              1
22974   IBM                           1
22975     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
22976   Intel                         2
22977   [no-dmi-info]                 3
22978 maintainer:~#
22979 </pre></blockquote>
22980
22981 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
22982 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
22983 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
22984 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
22985 option to list the individual machines.</p>
22986
22987 <p>A larger list is
22988 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
22989 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
22990 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
22991 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
22992 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
22993 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
22994 collector.</p>
22995
22996       </div>
22997       <div class="tags">
22998
22999
23000         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>.
23001
23002
23003       </div>
23004     </div>
23005     <div class="padding"></div>
23006
23007     <div class="entry">
23008       <div class="title">
23009         <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>
23010       </div>
23011       <div class="date">
23012          1st June 2010
23013       </div>
23014       <div class="body">
23015         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
23016 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
23017 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
23018 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
23019 wait.</p>
23020
23021 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
23022 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
23023 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
23024 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
23025 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
23026 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
23027
23028 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
23029 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
23030 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
23031 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
23032 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
23033 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
23034 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
23035 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
23036
23037 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
23038
23039       </div>
23040       <div class="tags">
23041
23042
23043         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>.
23044
23045
23046       </div>
23047     </div>
23048     <div class="padding"></div>
23049
23050     <div class="entry">
23051       <div class="title">
23052         <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>
23053       </div>
23054       <div class="date">
23055         27th May 2010
23056       </div>
23057       <div class="body">
23058         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
23059 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
23060 issues are known and should be solved:
23061
23062 <p><ul>
23063
23064 <li>The wicd package seen to
23065 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
23066 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
23067 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
23068 seem to be on the case.</li>
23069
23070 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
23071 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
23072 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
23073 maintainer is on the case.</li>
23074
23075 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
23076 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
23077 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
23078 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
23079 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
23080 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
23081 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
23082 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
23083
23084 </ul></p>
23085
23086 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
23087 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
23088 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
23089 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
23090
23091 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
23092 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
23093 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
23094 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
23095
23096 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
23097
23098       </div>
23099       <div class="tags">
23100
23101
23102         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>.
23103
23104
23105       </div>
23106     </div>
23107     <div class="padding"></div>
23108
23109     <div class="entry">
23110       <div class="title">
23111         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
23112       </div>
23113       <div class="date">
23114         22nd May 2010
23115       </div>
23116       <div class="body">
23117         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
23118 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
23119 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
23120 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
23121
23122 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
23123 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
23124 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
23125 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
23126 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
23127 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
23128 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
23129 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
23130 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
23131 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
23132 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
23133 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
23134 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
23135 going to work.</p>
23136
23137 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
23138 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
23139 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
23140 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
23141 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
23142 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
23143 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
23144 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
23145 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
23146 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
23147 Edu.</p>
23148
23149 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
23150 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
23151 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
23152 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
23153 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
23154 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
23155
23156 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
23157 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
23158
23159       </div>
23160       <div class="tags">
23161
23162
23163         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>.
23164
23165
23166       </div>
23167     </div>
23168     <div class="padding"></div>
23169
23170     <div class="entry">
23171       <div class="title">
23172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
23173       </div>
23174       <div class="date">
23175         19th May 2010
23176       </div>
23177       <div class="body">
23178         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
23179 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
23180 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
23181 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
23182 into unstable.  The
23183 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
23184 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
23185 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
23186 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
23187 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
23188 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
23189 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
23190
23191 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
23192 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
23193 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
23194 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
23195 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
23196 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
23197 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
23198 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
23199
23200 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
23201 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
23202 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
23203 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
23204 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
23205 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
23206 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
23207
23208 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
23209 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
23210 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
23211 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
23212 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
23213 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
23214 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
23215 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
23216 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
23217 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
23218 on the home directory servers.</p>
23219
23220 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
23221 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
23222 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
23223 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
23224 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
23225 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
23226
23227 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
23228 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
23229
23230       </div>
23231       <div class="tags">
23232
23233
23234         Tags: <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>.
23235
23236
23237       </div>
23238     </div>
23239     <div class="padding"></div>
23240
23241     <div class="entry">
23242       <div class="title">
23243         <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>
23244       </div>
23245       <div class="date">
23246         14th May 2010
23247       </div>
23248       <div class="body">
23249         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
23250 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
23251 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
23252 expected, if I am to believe the
23253 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
23254 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
23255 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
23256 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
23257 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
23258 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
23259 version.</p>
23260
23261 More information about
23262 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
23263 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
23264 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
23265 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
23266
23267 <blockquote><pre>
23268 CONCURRENCY=none
23269 </pre></blockquote>
23270
23271 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
23272 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
23273 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
23274 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
23275
23276       </div>
23277       <div class="tags">
23278
23279
23280         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>.
23281
23282
23283       </div>
23284     </div>
23285     <div class="padding"></div>
23286
23287     <div class="entry">
23288       <div class="title">
23289         <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>
23290       </div>
23291       <div class="date">
23292         14th May 2010
23293       </div>
23294       <div class="body">
23295         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
23296 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
23297 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
23298 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
23299 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
23300 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
23301 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
23302 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
23303
23304 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
23305 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
23306 this on the collector host:</p>
23307
23308 <blockquote><pre>
23309 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
23310 </pre></blockquote>
23311
23312 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
23313 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
23314
23315 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
23316 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
23317 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
23318 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
23319 written yet.</p>
23320
23321       </div>
23322       <div class="tags">
23323
23324
23325         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>.
23326
23327
23328       </div>
23329     </div>
23330     <div class="padding"></div>
23331
23332     <div class="entry">
23333       <div class="title">
23334         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
23335       </div>
23336       <div class="date">
23337         13th May 2010
23338       </div>
23339       <div class="body">
23340         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
23341 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
23342 has been
23343 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
23344
23345 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
23346 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
23347 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
23348 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
23349 based boot system.  Tollef is
23350 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
23351 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
23352 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
23353 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
23354 at the moment do not.</p>
23355
23356 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
23357 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
23358 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
23359 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
23360 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
23361 way forward.</p>
23362
23363 <p>In the mean time, based on the
23364 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
23365 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
23366 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
23367 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
23368 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
23369 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
23370 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
23371 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
23372
23373       </div>
23374       <div class="tags">
23375
23376
23377         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>.
23378
23379
23380       </div>
23381     </div>
23382     <div class="padding"></div>
23383
23384     <div class="entry">
23385       <div class="title">
23386         <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>
23387       </div>
23388       <div class="date">
23389          6th May 2010
23390       </div>
23391       <div class="body">
23392         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
23393 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
23394 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
23395 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
23396 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
23397 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
23398 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
23399
23400 <blockquote><pre>
23401 CONCURRENCY=makefile
23402 </pre></blockquote>
23403
23404 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
23405 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
23406 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
23407 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
23408 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
23409 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
23410 make this happen.</p>
23411
23412 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
23413 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
23414 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
23415 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
23416 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
23417
23418 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
23419 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
23420 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
23421 fix the remaining issues.</p>
23422
23423 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
23424 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
23425 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
23426 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
23427
23428       </div>
23429       <div class="tags">
23430
23431
23432         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>.
23433
23434
23435       </div>
23436     </div>
23437     <div class="padding"></div>
23438
23439     <div class="entry">
23440       <div class="title">
23441         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
23442       </div>
23443       <div class="date">
23444          2nd May 2010
23445       </div>
23446       <div class="body">
23447         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
23448 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
23449 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
23450
23451 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
23452 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
23453 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
23454 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
23455 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
23456
23457 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
23458 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
23459
23460 <blockquote><pre>
23461 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
23462 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
23463 Password expires                                        : never
23464 Password inactive                                       : never
23465 Account expires                                         : never
23466 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
23467 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
23468 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
23469 root@tjener:~#
23470 </pre></blockquote>
23471
23472 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
23473 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
23474 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
23475 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
23476 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
23477 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
23478
23479 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
23480 intended:</p>
23481
23482 <blockquote><pre>
23483 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
23484 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
23485 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
23486 Password expires                                        : never
23487 Password inactive                                       : never
23488 Account expires                                         : never
23489 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
23490 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
23491 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
23492 root@tjener:~#
23493 </pre></blockquote>
23494
23495 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
23496 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
23497 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
23498
23499 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
23500 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
23501
23502 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
23503 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
23504
23505 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
23506 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
23507 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
23508 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
23509 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
23510 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
23511 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
23512
23513 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
23514 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
23515 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
23516 change.</p>
23517
23518       </div>
23519       <div class="tags">
23520
23521
23522         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
23523
23524
23525       </div>
23526     </div>
23527     <div class="padding"></div>
23528
23529     <div class="entry">
23530       <div class="title">
23531         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
23532       </div>
23533       <div class="date">
23534         28th April 2010
23535       </div>
23536       <div class="body">
23537         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
23538 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
23539 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
23540 and go.</p>
23541
23542 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
23543 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
23544 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
23545 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
23546
23547 <ul>
23548
23549  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
23550    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
23551    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
23552    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
23553    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
23554    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
23555    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
23556    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
23557    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
23558    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
23559    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
23560    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
23561
23562  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
23563    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
23564    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
23565    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
23566    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
23567    or the Fedora developed
23568    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
23569    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
23570
23571  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
23572    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
23573    directory, using unison.</li>
23574
23575  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
23576    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
23577    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
23578    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
23579    implemented.</li>
23580
23581  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
23582    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
23583
23584  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
23585    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
23586    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
23587
23588 </ul>
23589
23590 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
23591 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
23592 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
23593 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
23594 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
23595 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
23596 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
23597 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
23598 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
23599
23600 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
23601 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
23602
23603       </div>
23604       <div class="tags">
23605
23606
23607         Tags: <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>.
23608
23609
23610       </div>
23611     </div>
23612     <div class="padding"></div>
23613
23614     <div class="entry">
23615       <div class="title">
23616         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
23617       </div>
23618       <div class="date">
23619         19th April 2010
23620       </div>
23621       <div class="body">
23622         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
23623 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
23624 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
23625 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
23626 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
23627 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
23628 restrictions on the web, for example from
23629 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
23630 epub-version from
23631 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
23632 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
23633 strongly recommend this book.</p>
23634
23635       </div>
23636       <div class="tags">
23637
23638
23639         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
23640
23641
23642       </div>
23643     </div>
23644     <div class="padding"></div>
23645
23646     <div class="entry">
23647       <div class="title">
23648         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
23649       </div>
23650       <div class="date">
23651         14th April 2010
23652       </div>
23653       <div class="body">
23654         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
23655 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
23656 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
23657 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
23658 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
23659 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
23660 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
23661 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
23662 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
23663
23664 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
23665 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
23666 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
23667 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
23668 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
23669
23670 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
23671 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
23672
23673 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
23674 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
23675 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
23676 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
23677 to work properly.</p>
23678
23679 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
23680 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
23681 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
23682 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
23683 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
23684 time.</p>
23685
23686 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
23687 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
23688 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
23689 up in a few days.</p>
23690
23691       </div>
23692       <div class="tags">
23693
23694
23695         Tags: <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>.
23696
23697
23698       </div>
23699     </div>
23700     <div class="padding"></div>
23701
23702     <div class="entry">
23703       <div class="title">
23704         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
23705       </div>
23706       <div class="date">
23707          6th March 2010
23708       </div>
23709       <div class="body">
23710         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
23711 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
23712 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
23713 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
23714 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
23715 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
23716
23717 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
23718 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
23719 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
23720 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
23721
23722 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
23723 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
23724 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
23725 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
23726 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
23727 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
23728
23729       </div>
23730       <div class="tags">
23731
23732
23733         Tags: <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>.
23734
23735
23736       </div>
23737     </div>
23738     <div class="padding"></div>
23739
23740     <div class="entry">
23741       <div class="title">
23742         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
23743       </div>
23744       <div class="date">
23745         11th February 2010
23746       </div>
23747       <div class="body">
23748         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
23749 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
23750 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
23751 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
23752 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
23753 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
23754 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
23755
23756 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
23757
23758 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
23759 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
23760 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
23761 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
23762
23763       </div>
23764       <div class="tags">
23765
23766
23767         Tags: <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>.
23768
23769
23770       </div>
23771     </div>
23772     <div class="padding"></div>
23773
23774     <div class="entry">
23775       <div class="title">
23776         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
23777       </div>
23778       <div class="date">
23779         27th January 2010
23780       </div>
23781       <div class="body">
23782         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
23783 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
23784 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
23785 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
23786 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
23787 further.</p>
23788
23789 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
23790 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
23791 configured to be a server for the
23792 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
23793 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
23794 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
23795 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
23796 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
23797 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
23798 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
23799 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
23800 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
23801 and Nagios configuration.</p>
23802
23803 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
23804 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
23805 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
23806 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
23807
23808 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
23809 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
23810 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
23811 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
23812 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
23813 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
23814 the machine.</p>
23815
23816 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
23817 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
23818 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
23819 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
23820
23821 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
23822 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
23823 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
23824 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
23825 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
23826 everything is taken care of.</p>
23827
23828       </div>
23829       <div class="tags">
23830
23831
23832         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
23833
23834
23835       </div>
23836     </div>
23837     <div class="padding"></div>
23838
23839     <div class="entry">
23840       <div class="title">
23841         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
23842       </div>
23843       <div class="date">
23844         12th August 2009
23845       </div>
23846       <div class="body">
23847         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
23848 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
23849 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
23850 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
23851
23852 <table>
23853 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
23854 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
23855 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
23856 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
23857 </table>
23858
23859 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
23860 got these numbers:</p>
23861
23862 <table>
23863 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
23864 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
23865 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
23866 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
23867 </table>
23868
23869 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
23870
23871 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
23872 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
23873 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
23874 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
23875 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
23876
23877
23878 <table>
23879 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
23880 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
23881 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
23882 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
23883 </table>
23884
23885 <p>And with 'site:no':
23886
23887 <table>
23888 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
23889 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
23890 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
23891 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
23892 </table>
23893
23894 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
23895 numbers.</p>
23896
23897       </div>
23898       <div class="tags">
23899
23900
23901         Tags: <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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
23902
23903
23904       </div>
23905     </div>
23906     <div class="padding"></div>
23907
23908     <div class="entry">
23909       <div class="title">
23910         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
23911       </div>
23912       <div class="date">
23913          8th August 2009
23914       </div>
23915       <div class="body">
23916         <p>According to <a
23917 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
23918 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
23919 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
23920 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
23921 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
23922 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
23923 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
23924 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
23925 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
23926 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
23927
23928 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
23929 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
23930 seminar this autumn.</p>
23931
23932       </div>
23933       <div class="tags">
23934
23935
23936         Tags: <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>.
23937
23938
23939       </div>
23940     </div>
23941     <div class="padding"></div>
23942
23943     <div class="entry">
23944       <div class="title">
23945         <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>
23946       </div>
23947       <div class="date">
23948         27th July 2009
23949       </div>
23950       <div class="body">
23951         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
23952 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
23953 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
23954 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
23955 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
23956 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
23957 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
23958
23959 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
23960 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
23961 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
23962
23963       </div>
23964       <div class="tags">
23965
23966
23967         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>.
23968
23969
23970       </div>
23971     </div>
23972     <div class="padding"></div>
23973
23974     <div class="entry">
23975       <div class="title">
23976         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
23977       </div>
23978       <div class="date">
23979         22nd July 2009
23980       </div>
23981       <div class="body">
23982         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
23983 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
23984 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
23985 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
23986 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
23987 the package up to date.</p>
23988
23989 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
23990 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
23991 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
23992 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
23993 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
23994 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
23995 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
23996 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
23997 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
23998 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
23999 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
24000 working on the future release.</p>
24001
24002 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
24003 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
24004
24005       </div>
24006       <div class="tags">
24007
24008
24009         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>.
24010
24011
24012       </div>
24013     </div>
24014     <div class="padding"></div>
24015
24016     <div class="entry">
24017       <div class="title">
24018         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
24019       </div>
24020       <div class="date">
24021         24th June 2009
24022       </div>
24023       <div class="body">
24024         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
24025 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
24026 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
24027 funded
24028 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
24029 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
24030 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
24031 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
24032 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
24033 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
24034
24035 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
24036 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
24037 boot:</p>
24038
24039 <ul>
24040
24041 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
24042
24043 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
24044    clock is in UTC.</li>
24045
24046 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
24047    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
24048    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
24049
24050 </ul>
24051
24052 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
24053 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
24054 Villegas</a>.
24055
24056 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
24057 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
24058 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
24059 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
24060 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
24061 using this.</p>
24062
24063 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
24064 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
24065 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
24066 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
24067 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
24068 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
24069 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
24070
24071       </div>
24072       <div class="tags">
24073
24074
24075         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>.
24076
24077
24078       </div>
24079     </div>
24080     <div class="padding"></div>
24081
24082     <div class="entry">
24083       <div class="title">
24084         <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>
24085       </div>
24086       <div class="date">
24087          2nd May 2009
24088       </div>
24089       <div class="body">
24090         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
24091 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
24092 do not yet know them.</p>
24093
24094 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
24095 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
24096 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
24097 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
24098 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
24099 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
24100 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
24101 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
24102 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
24103 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
24104 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
24105
24106 <p>The second one is
24107 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
24108 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
24109 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
24110 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
24111 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
24112 and the company behind it is running
24113 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
24114 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
24115 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
24116 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
24117 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
24118 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
24119 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
24120 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
24121
24122 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
24123 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
24124 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
24125 surrounded by today.</p>
24126
24127       </div>
24128       <div class="tags">
24129
24130
24131         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>.
24132
24133
24134       </div>
24135     </div>
24136     <div class="padding"></div>
24137
24138     <div class="entry">
24139       <div class="title">
24140         <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>
24141       </div>
24142       <div class="date">
24143         28th April 2009
24144       </div>
24145       <div class="body">
24146         <p>Julien Blache
24147 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
24148 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
24149 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
24150 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
24151 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
24152 properties.</p>
24153
24154       </div>
24155       <div class="tags">
24156
24157
24158         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>.
24159
24160
24161       </div>
24162     </div>
24163     <div class="padding"></div>
24164
24165     <div class="entry">
24166       <div class="title">
24167         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
24168       </div>
24169       <div class="date">
24170          5th April 2009
24171       </div>
24172       <div class="body">
24173         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
24174 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
24175 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
24176 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
24177 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
24178 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
24179 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
24180 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
24181
24182 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
24183 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
24184 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
24185   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
24186   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
24187
24188 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
24189 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
24190 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
24191 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
24192
24193 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
24194 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
24195 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
24196 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
24197
24198 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
24199 set -e
24200 URL="$1"
24201 SAVEFILE="$2"
24202 DURATION="$3"
24203 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
24204   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
24205   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
24206 pid=$!
24207 sleep $DURATION
24208 kill $pid
24209 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
24210
24211       </div>
24212       <div class="tags">
24213
24214
24215         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
24216
24217
24218       </div>
24219     </div>
24220     <div class="padding"></div>
24221
24222     <div class="entry">
24223       <div class="title">
24224         <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>
24225       </div>
24226       <div class="date">
24227         30th March 2009
24228       </div>
24229       <div class="body">
24230         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
24231 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
24232 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
24233 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
24234 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
24235 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
24236 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
24237 application.</p>
24238
24239 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
24240 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
24241 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
24242 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
24243 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
24244 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
24245 blocked from doing so.</p>
24246
24247 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
24248 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
24249 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
24250 requirements change.</p>
24251
24252 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
24253 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
24254 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
24255
24256       </div>
24257       <div class="tags">
24258
24259
24260         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>.
24261
24262
24263       </div>
24264     </div>
24265     <div class="padding"></div>
24266
24267     <div class="entry">
24268       <div class="title">
24269         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
24270       </div>
24271       <div class="date">
24272         29th March 2009
24273       </div>
24274       <div class="body">
24275         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
24276 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
24277 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
24278 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
24279 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
24280 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
24281 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
24282 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
24283 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
24284 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
24285 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
24286 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
24287 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
24288 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
24289 now. :)</p>
24290
24291       </div>
24292       <div class="tags">
24293
24294
24295         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>.
24296
24297
24298       </div>
24299     </div>
24300     <div class="padding"></div>
24301
24302     <div class="entry">
24303       <div class="title">
24304         <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>
24305       </div>
24306       <div class="date">
24307         29th March 2009
24308       </div>
24309       <div class="body">
24310         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
24311 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
24312 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
24313 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
24314 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
24315 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
24316
24317 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
24318 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
24319 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
24320 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
24321 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
24322 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
24323 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
24324 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
24325 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
24326 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
24327 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
24328 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
24329 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
24330
24331 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
24332 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
24333 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
24334 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
24335
24336 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
24337 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
24338
24339 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
24340 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
24341 new IETF work group?</p>
24342
24343       </div>
24344       <div class="tags">
24345
24346
24347         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>.
24348
24349
24350       </div>
24351     </div>
24352     <div class="padding"></div>
24353
24354     <div class="entry">
24355       <div class="title">
24356         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
24357       </div>
24358       <div class="date">
24359         28th February 2009
24360       </div>
24361       <div class="body">
24362         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
24363 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
24364 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
24365 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
24366 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
24367 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
24368 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
24369 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
24370 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
24371 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
24372 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
24373 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
24374 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
24375 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
24376 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
24377 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
24378 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
24379 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
24380 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
24381 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
24382 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
24383 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
24384 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
24385 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
24386 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
24387 machine.</p>
24388
24389 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
24390 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
24391 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
24392 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
24393 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
24394 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
24395 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
24396
24397 <pre>
24398 use LWP::Simple;
24399 use POSIX;
24400 use WWW::Mechanize;
24401 use Date::Parse;
24402 [...]
24403 sub get_support_info {
24404     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
24405     my $str;
24406
24407     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
24408         # fetch website from Dell support
24409         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
24410         my $webpage = get($url);
24411         return undef unless ($webpage);
24412
24413         my $daysleft = -1;
24414         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
24415         foreach my $line (@lines) {
24416             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
24417             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
24418             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
24419
24420             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
24421             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
24422             my $lastend = "";
24423             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
24424                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
24425
24426                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
24427                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
24428                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
24429                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
24430                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
24431                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
24432                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
24433             }
24434             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
24435             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
24436                 if ($lastend lt $today);
24437         }
24438     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
24439         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
24440         my $url =
24441             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
24442         $mech->get($url);
24443         my $fields = {
24444             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
24445             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
24446             'country' => 'NO',
24447             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
24448             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
24449         };
24450         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
24451                             fields      => $fields );
24452         # Next step is screen scraping
24453         my $content = $mech->content();
24454
24455         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
24456         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
24457         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
24458         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
24459
24460         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
24461
24462         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
24463             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
24464                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
24465             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
24466             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
24467                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
24468             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
24469                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
24470
24471             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
24472
24473             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
24474                 if ($end lt $today);
24475         }
24476     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
24477         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
24478         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
24479         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
24480             my $content =
24481                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
24482             if ($content) {
24483                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
24484                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
24485                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
24486                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
24487
24488                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
24489                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
24490
24491                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
24492
24493                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
24494                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
24495                     if ($end lt $today);
24496             }
24497         }
24498     }
24499     return $str;
24500 }
24501 </pre>
24502
24503 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
24504 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
24505 from dmidecode.</p>
24506
24507 <pre>
24508 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
24509                        "447707-B21");
24510 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
24511 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
24512                        "1234567");
24513 </pre>
24514
24515 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
24516 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
24517
24518 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
24519 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
24520 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
24521 do so.</p>
24522
24523       </div>
24524       <div class="tags">
24525
24526
24527         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
24528
24529
24530       </div>
24531     </div>
24532     <div class="padding"></div>
24533
24534     <div class="entry">
24535       <div class="title">
24536         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
24537       </div>
24538       <div class="date">
24539         20th February 2009
24540       </div>
24541       <div class="body">
24542         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
24543 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
24544 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
24545 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
24546 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
24547 the "missing" computer.</p>
24548
24549 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
24550 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
24551 code blocks as defined in the
24552 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
24553 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
24554 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
24555 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
24556 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
24557 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
24558 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
24559 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
24560 codes.</p>
24561
24562 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
24563 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
24564 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
24565 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
24566 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
24567 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
24568
24569 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
24570 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
24571 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
24572 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
24573 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
24574 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
24575 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
24576 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
24577 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
24578 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
24579
24580 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
24581 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
24582 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
24583
24584       </div>
24585       <div class="tags">
24586
24587
24588         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
24589
24590
24591       </div>
24592     </div>
24593     <div class="padding"></div>
24594
24595     <div class="entry">
24596       <div class="title">
24597         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
24598       </div>
24599       <div class="date">
24600         17th January 2009
24601       </div>
24602       <div class="body">
24603         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
24604 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
24605 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
24606 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
24607 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
24608 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
24609 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
24610 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
24611 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
24612 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
24613 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
24614 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
24615 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
24616 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
24617
24618 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
24619 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
24620 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
24621 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
24622 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
24623 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
24624 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
24625 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
24626 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
24627 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
24628 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
24629 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
24630 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
24631 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
24632 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
24633 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
24634 playing when the download is done.</p>
24635
24636 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
24637 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
24638 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
24639 too.</p>
24640
24641 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
24642 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
24643 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
24644 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
24645
24646       </div>
24647       <div class="tags">
24648
24649
24650         Tags: <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/nuug">nuug</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>.
24651
24652
24653       </div>
24654     </div>
24655     <div class="padding"></div>
24656
24657     <div class="entry">
24658       <div class="title">
24659         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
24660       </div>
24661       <div class="date">
24662         28th December 2008
24663       </div>
24664       <div class="body">
24665         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
24666 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
24667 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
24668 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
24669 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
24670 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
24671 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
24672 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
24673 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
24674 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
24675 source, sink and mixer applications and
24676 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
24677 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
24678 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
24679 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
24680 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
24681 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
24682 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
24683 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
24684 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
24685
24686 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
24687 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
24688 larger stick as well.</p>
24689
24690       </div>
24691       <div class="tags">
24692
24693
24694         Tags: <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/video">video</a>.
24695
24696
24697       </div>
24698     </div>
24699     <div class="padding"></div>
24700
24701     <div class="entry">
24702       <div class="title">
24703         <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>
24704       </div>
24705       <div class="date">
24706          7th December 2008
24707       </div>
24708       <div class="body">
24709         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
24710 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
24711 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
24712 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
24713 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
24714 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
24715 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
24716 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
24717
24718 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
24719 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
24720 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
24721 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
24722 of these cards.</p>
24723
24724       </div>
24725       <div class="tags">
24726
24727
24728         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>.
24729
24730
24731       </div>
24732     </div>
24733     <div class="padding"></div>
24734
24735     <div class="entry">
24736       <div class="title">
24737         <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>
24738       </div>
24739       <div class="date">
24740         25th November 2008
24741       </div>
24742       <div class="body">
24743         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
24744 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
24745 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
24746 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
24747 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
24748 notes are available on
24749 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
24750 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
24751 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
24752 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
24753 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
24754 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
24755 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
24756 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
24757 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
24758
24759 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
24760 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
24761
24762       </div>
24763       <div class="tags">
24764
24765
24766         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>.
24767
24768
24769       </div>
24770     </div>
24771     <div class="padding"></div>
24772
24773     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
24774     <div id="sidebar">
24775
24776
24777
24778 <h2>Archive</h2>
24779 <ul>
24780
24781 <li>2016
24782 <ul>
24783
24784 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
24785
24786 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
24787
24788 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (1)</a></li>
24789
24790 </ul></li>
24791
24792 <li>2015
24793 <ul>
24794
24795 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
24796
24797 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
24798
24799 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
24800
24801 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
24802
24803 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
24804
24805 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
24806
24807 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
24808
24809 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
24810
24811 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
24812
24813 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
24814
24815 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
24816
24817 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
24818
24819 </ul></li>
24820
24821 <li>2014
24822 <ul>
24823
24824 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
24825
24826 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
24827
24828 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
24829
24830 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
24831
24832 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
24833
24834 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
24835
24836 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
24837
24838 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
24839
24840 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
24841
24842 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
24843
24844 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
24845
24846 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
24847
24848 </ul></li>
24849
24850 <li>2013
24851 <ul>
24852
24853 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
24854
24855 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
24856
24857 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
24858
24859 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
24860
24861 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
24862
24863 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
24864
24865 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
24866
24867 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
24868
24869 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
24870
24871 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
24872
24873 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
24874
24875 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
24876
24877 </ul></li>
24878
24879 <li>2012
24880 <ul>
24881
24882 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
24883
24884 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
24885
24886 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
24887
24888 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
24889
24890 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
24891
24892 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
24893
24894 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
24895
24896 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
24897
24898 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
24899
24900 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
24901
24902 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
24903
24904 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
24905
24906 </ul></li>
24907
24908 <li>2011
24909 <ul>
24910
24911 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
24912
24913 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
24914
24915 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
24916
24917 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
24918
24919 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
24920
24921 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
24922
24923 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
24924
24925 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
24926
24927 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
24928
24929 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
24930
24931 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
24932
24933 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
24934
24935 </ul></li>
24936
24937 <li>2010
24938 <ul>
24939
24940 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
24941
24942 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
24943
24944 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
24945
24946 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
24947
24948 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
24949
24950 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
24951
24952 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
24953
24954 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
24955
24956 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
24957
24958 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
24959
24960 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
24961
24962 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
24963
24964 </ul></li>
24965
24966 <li>2009
24967 <ul>
24968
24969 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
24970
24971 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
24972
24973 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
24974
24975 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
24976
24977 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
24978
24979 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
24980
24981 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
24982
24983 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
24984
24985 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
24986
24987 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
24988
24989 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
24990
24991 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
24992
24993 </ul></li>
24994
24995 <li>2008
24996 <ul>
24997
24998 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
24999
25000 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
25001
25002 </ul></li>
25003
25004 </ul>
25005
25006
25007
25008 <h2>Tags</h2>
25009 <ul>
25010
25011  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
25012
25013  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
25014
25015  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
25016
25017  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
25018
25019  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
25020
25021  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
25022
25023  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
25024
25025  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
25026
25027  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (121)</a></li>
25028
25029  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (154)</a></li>
25030
25031  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
25032
25033  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
25034
25035  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (20)</a></li>
25036
25037  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
25038
25039  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (303)</a></li>
25040
25041  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
25042
25043  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
25044
25045  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (25)</a></li>
25046
25047  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
25048
25049  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
25050
25051  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
25052
25053  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
25054
25055  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (11)</a></li>
25056
25057  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
25058
25059  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
25060
25061  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
25062
25063  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
25064
25065  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
25066
25067  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
25068
25069  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (37)</a></li>
25070
25071  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (7)</a></li>
25072
25073  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (273)</a></li>
25074
25075  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
25076
25077  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (22)</a></li>
25078
25079  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
25080
25081  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (58)</a></li>
25082
25083  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (92)</a></li>
25084
25085  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
25086
25087  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
25088
25089  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
25090
25091  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
25092
25093  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
25094
25095  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
25096
25097  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
25098
25099  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
25100
25101  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (45)</a></li>
25102
25103  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
25104
25105  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
25106
25107  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
25108
25109  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
25110
25111  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
25112
25113  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (36)</a></li>
25114
25115  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
25116
25117  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
25118
25119  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
25120
25121  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (55)</a></li>
25122
25123  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
25124
25125  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
25126
25127 </ul>
25128
25129
25130     </div>
25131     <p style="text-align: right">
25132  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
25133 </p>
25134
25135   </body>
25136 </html>