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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         10th April 2016
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>During this weekends
  32 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
  33 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
  34 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
  35 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
  36 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
  37 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
  38 contributing using
  39 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
  40 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
  41 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
  42 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
  43 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
  44 contributors</a>.</p>
  45
  46 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
  47 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
  48 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
  49 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
  50 available for many more languages.</p>
  51
  52       </div>
  53       <div class="tags">
  54
  55
  56         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>.
  57
  58
  59       </div>
  60     </div>
  61     <div class="padding"></div>
  62
  63     <div class="entry">
  64       <div class="title">
  65         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
  66       </div>
  67       <div class="date">
  68          7th April 2016
  69       </div>
  70       <div class="body">
  71         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
  72 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
  73 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
  74 But I might be wrong.</p>
  75
  76 <p>According to
  77 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
  78 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
  79 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
  80 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
  81 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
  82 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
  83 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
  84 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
  85 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
  86 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
  87
  88 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
  89 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
  90 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
  91 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
  92 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
  93 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
  94 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
  95 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
  96 team status page</a>, and
  97 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
  98 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
  99
 100 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
 101 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
 102 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
 103 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
 104 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
 105 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
 106 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
 107 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
 108 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
 109 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
 110 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
 111 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
 112
 113       </div>
 114       <div class="tags">
 115
 116
 117         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>.
 118
 119
 120       </div>
 121     </div>
 122     <div class="padding"></div>
 123
 124     <div class="entry">
 125       <div class="title">
 126         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
 127       </div>
 128       <div class="date">
 129         23rd March 2016
 130       </div>
 131       <div class="body">
 132         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
 133 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
 134 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
 135 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
 136 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
 137 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
 138 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
 139 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
 140
 141 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
 142 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
 143 and lifetime prediction by running:
 144
 145 <p><pre>
 146 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
 147 </pre></p>
 148
 149 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
 150
 151 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
 152 entry yet):</p>
 153
 154 <p><pre>
 155 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
 156 </pre></p>
 157
 158 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
 159 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
 160 few years of data.</p>
 161
 162 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
 163 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
 164 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
 165 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
 166 know.  The issue is reported as
 167 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
 168 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
 169 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
 170 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
 171 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
 172
 173 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
 174 check out the
 175 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
 176 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
 177 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
 178 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
 179 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
 180
 181       </div>
 182       <div class="tags">
 183
 184
 185         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>.
 186
 187
 188       </div>
 189     </div>
 190     <div class="padding"></div>
 191
 192     <div class="entry">
 193       <div class="title">
 194         <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>
 195       </div>
 196       <div class="date">
 197         15th March 2016
 198       </div>
 199       <div class="body">
 200         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
 201 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
 202 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
 203 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
 204 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
 205 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
 206 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
 207 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
 208 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
 209 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
 210 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
 211
 212 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
 213 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
 214 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
 215 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
 216 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
 217 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
 218 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
 219 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
 220 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
 221 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
 222 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
 223
 224 <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>
 225
 226 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
 227 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
 228 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
 229 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
 230 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
 231 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
 232
 233 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
 234 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
 235 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
 236 and graphing.</p>
 237
 238 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
 239 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
 240 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
 241 on
 242 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
 243 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
 244
 245       </div>
 246       <div class="tags">
 247
 248
 249         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>.
 250
 251
 252       </div>
 253     </div>
 254     <div class="padding"></div>
 255
 256     <div class="entry">
 257       <div class="title">
 258         <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>
 259       </div>
 260       <div class="date">
 261         19th February 2016
 262       </div>
 263       <div class="body">
 264         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
 265 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
 266 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
 267 the code in the package in question, preferably in
 268 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
 269 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
 270
 271 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
 272 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
 273 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
 274 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
 275 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
 276 out what was wrong with
 277 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
 278 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
 279 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
 280 semi-automatically.</p>
 281
 282 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
 283 file based on the code in the source package,
 284 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
 285 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
 286 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
 287 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
 288 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
 289 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
 290 option in
 291 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
 292 blog posts from 2014</a>.
 293
 294 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
 295
 296 <p><pre>
 297 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
 298 </pre></p>
 299
 300 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
 301 this might not be the best option.</p>
 302
 303 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
 304 this approach in
 305 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
 306 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
 307 dpkg-copyright' option:
 308
 309 <p><pre>
 310 cme update dpkg-copyright
 311 </pre></p>
 312
 313 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
 314 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
 315
 316 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
 317 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
 318 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
 319 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
 320 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
 321 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
 322 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
 323 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
 324 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
 325 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
 326
 327 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
 328 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
 329 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
 330 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
 331
 332 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
 333 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
 334 planet.debian.org.</p>
 335
 336 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 337 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 338 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 339
 340 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
 341 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
 342
 343 <p><pre>
 344 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
 345   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
 346 </pre></p>
 347
 348 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
 349 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
 350 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
 351 with my packages in the future.</p>
 352
 353 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
 354 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
 355 command line.</p>
 356
 357       </div>
 358       <div class="tags">
 359
 360
 361         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>.
 362
 363
 364       </div>
 365     </div>
 366     <div class="padding"></div>
 367
 368     <div class="entry">
 369       <div class="title">
 370         <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>
 371       </div>
 372       <div class="date">
 373          4th February 2016
 374       </div>
 375       <div class="body">
 376         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
 377 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
 378 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
 379 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
 380 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
 381 about. :)</p>
 382
 383 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
 384 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
 385 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
 386 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
 387 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
 388 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
 389
 390 <blockquote><pre>
 391 % apt install appstream
 392 [...]
 393 % apt update
 394 [...]
 395 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
 396   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
 397 firmware-qlogic
 398 %
 399 </pre></blockquote>
 400
 401 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
 402 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
 403 a way appstream can use.</p>
 404
 405 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
 406 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
 407 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
 408 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
 409 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
 410 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
 411
 412 <blockquote><pre>
 413 % apt install appstream
 414 [...]
 415 % apt update
 416 [...]
 417 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
 418   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
 419 bkchem
 420 phototonic
 421 inkscape
 422 shutter
 423 tetzle
 424 geeqie
 425 xia
 426 pinta
 427 gthumb
 428 karbon
 429 comix
 430 mirage
 431 viewnior
 432 postr
 433 ristretto
 434 kolourpaint4
 435 eog
 436 eom
 437 gimagereader
 438 midori
 439 %
 440 </pre></blockquote>
 441
 442 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
 443 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
 444
 445       </div>
 446       <div class="tags">
 447
 448
 449         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>.
 450
 451
 452       </div>
 453     </div>
 454     <div class="padding"></div>
 455
 456     <div class="entry">
 457       <div class="title">
 458         <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>
 459       </div>
 460       <div class="date">
 461         24th January 2016
 462       </div>
 463       <div class="body">
 464         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
 465 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
 466 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
 467 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
 468 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
 469 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
 470 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
 471 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
 472 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
 473 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
 474 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
 475 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
 476 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
 477 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
 478 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
 479 entities.</p>
 480
 481 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
 482
 483 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
 484 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
 485 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
 486 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
 487 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
 488 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
 489 tool to do so is called
 490 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
 491 discovered it when I read
 492 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
 493 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
 494 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
 495 The python program was in Debian, but
 496 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
 497 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
 498 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
 499 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
 500 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
 501 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
 502 are now included
 503 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
 504
 505 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
 506 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
 507 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
 508 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
 509 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
 510 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
 511 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
 512 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
 513 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
 514 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
 515 about yourself with the services.</p>
 516
 517 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
 518 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
 519 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
 520 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
 521 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
 522 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
 523 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
 524 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
 525 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
 526 things.  A similar technique have been
 527 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
 528 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
 529 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
 530 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
 531 public.</p>
 532
 533 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
 534 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
 535 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
 536 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
 537
 538 <p>(I have uploaded
 539 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
 540 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
 541 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
 542
 543       </div>
 544       <div class="tags">
 545
 546
 547         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>.
 548
 549
 550       </div>
 551     </div>
 552     <div class="padding"></div>
 553
 554     <div class="entry">
 555       <div class="title">
 556         <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>
 557       </div>
 558       <div class="date">
 559         15th January 2016
 560       </div>
 561       <div class="body">
 562         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
 563 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
 564 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
 565 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
 566 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
 567 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
 568 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
 569 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
 570 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
 571 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
 572 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
 573 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
 574 was not the first to propose this, as the
 575 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
 576 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
 577 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
 578 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
 579
 580 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
 581 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
 582 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
 583 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
 584 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
 585
 586 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
 587 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
 588 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
 589 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
 590 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
 591 done in /etc/.</p>
 592
 593 <blockquote><pre>
 594 apt install apt-transport-tor
 595 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
 596 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
 597 </pre></blockquote>
 598
 599 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
 600 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
 601 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
 602 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
 603
 604 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
 605 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
 606 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
 607 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
 608 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
 609 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
 610
 611 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
 612 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
 613 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
 614 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
 615 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
 616
 617 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
 618 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
 619 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
 620 system.</p>
 621
 622       </div>
 623       <div class="tags">
 624
 625
 626         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>.
 627
 628
 629       </div>
 630     </div>
 631     <div class="padding"></div>
 632
 633     <div class="entry">
 634       <div class="title">
 635         <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>
 636       </div>
 637       <div class="date">
 638         23rd December 2015
 639       </div>
 640       <div class="body">
 641         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
 642 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
 643 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
 644 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
 645 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
 646 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
 647
 648 <p>A few days I came across
 649 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
 650 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
 651 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
 652 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
 653 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
 654 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
 655 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
 656 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
 657 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
 658 discovered the developer
 659 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
 660 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
 661 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
 662 archive.</p>
 663
 664 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
 665 it into Debian, where it currently
 666 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
 667 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
 668
 669 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
 670 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
 671 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
 672 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
 673 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
 674 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
 675 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
 676 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
 677 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
 678 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
 679 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
 680 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
 681
 682 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
 683 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
 684 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
 685 package show up in unstable.</p>
 686
 687       </div>
 688       <div class="tags">
 689
 690
 691         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>.
 692
 693
 694       </div>
 695     </div>
 696     <div class="padding"></div>
 697
 698     <div class="entry">
 699       <div class="title">
 700         <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>
 701       </div>
 702       <div class="date">
 703         20th December 2015
 704       </div>
 705       <div class="body">
 706         <p>Around three years ago, I created
 707 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
 708 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
 709 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
 710 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
 711 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
 712 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
 713 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
 714 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
 715 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
 716 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
 717 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
 718 with.</p>
 719
 720 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
 721 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
 722 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
 723 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
 724 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
 725 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
 726 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
 727 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
 728 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
 729 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
 730 Debian version of appstream.</p>
 731
 732 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
 733 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
 734 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
 735 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
 736 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
 737 how do add the required
 738 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
 739 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
 740 this content:</p>
 741
 742 <blockquote><pre>
 743 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
 744 &lt;component&gt;
 745   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
 746   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
 747   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
 748   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
 749   &lt;description&gt;
 750     &lt;p&gt;
 751       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
 752       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
 753       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
 754       launcher.
 755     &lt;/p&gt;
 756   &lt;/description&gt;
 757   &lt;provides&gt;
 758     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
 759   &lt;/provides&gt;
 760 &lt;/component&gt;
 761 </pre></blockquote>
 762
 763 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
 764 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
 765 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
 766 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
 767 0202.</p>
 768
 769 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
 770 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
 771 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
 772 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
 773 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
 774 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
 775 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
 776 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
 777
 778 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
 779 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
 780 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
 781 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
 782 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
 783
 784 <blockquote><pre>
 785 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
 786 </pre></blockquote>
 787
 788 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
 789 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
 790 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
 791 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
 792 question.</p>
 793
 794 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
 795 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
 796
 797 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
 798 try running this command on the command line:</p>
 799
 800 <blockquote><pre>
 801 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
 802 </pre></blockquote>
 803
 804 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
 805 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
 806 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
 807
 808       </div>
 809       <div class="tags">
 810
 811
 812         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>.
 813
 814
 815       </div>
 816     </div>
 817     <div class="padding"></div>
 818
 819     <div class="entry">
 820       <div class="title">
 821         <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>
 822       </div>
 823       <div class="date">
 824         30th November 2015
 825       </div>
 826       <div class="body">
 827         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
 828 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
 829 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
 830 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
 831 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
 832
 833 <blockquote>
 834
 835 <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>
 836
 837 <blockquote>
 838 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
 839
 840 The first step is to choose a
 841 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
 842 code.<br/>
 843
 844 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
 845 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
 846
 847 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
 848 work<br/>
 849
 850 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
 851 </blockquote>
 852
 853 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
 854 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
 855 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
 856 0x57</a></small></p>
 857
 858 <p>As the Debian Website
 859 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
 860 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
 861 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
 862 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
 863 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
 864 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
 865 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
 866 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
 867 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
 868 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
 869 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
 870 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
 871 Freedom">FaiF</a>
 872 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
 873 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
 874 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
 875 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
 876 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
 877 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
 878 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
 879 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
 880 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
 881 In March the SFC supported a
 882 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
 883 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
 884 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
 885 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
 886 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
 887 conferences
 888 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
 889 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
 890 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
 891 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
 892 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
 893 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
 894 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
 895 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
 896 Software.</p>
 897
 898 <p>If you support Free Software,
 899 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
 900 what the SFC do, agree with their
 901 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
 902 principles</a>, are happy about their
 903 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
 904 work on a project that is an SFC
 905 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
 906 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
 907 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
 908 Allan Webber</a>,
 909 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
 910 Smith</a>,
 911 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
 912 Bacon</a>, myself and
 913 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
 914 becoming a
 915 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
 916 next week your donation will be
 917 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
 918 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
 919 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
 920 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
 921 social media accounts.</p>
 922
 923 </blockquote>
 924
 925 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
 926 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
 927 supporter too?</p>
 928
 929       </div>
 930       <div class="tags">
 931
 932
 933         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>.
 934
 935
 936       </div>
 937     </div>
 938     <div class="padding"></div>
 939
 940     <div class="entry">
 941       <div class="title">
 942         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
 943       </div>
 944       <div class="date">
 945         17th November 2015
 946       </div>
 947       <div class="body">
 948         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
 949 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
 950 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
 951 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
 952 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
 953 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
 954 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
 955 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
 956 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
 957 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
 958
 959 <pre>
 960 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
 961       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
 962 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
 963 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
 964 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 965 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 966 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
 967 </pre>
 968
 969 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
 970 my old key.</p>
 971
 972 <p>If you signed my old key
 973 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
 974 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
 975 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
 976 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
 977
 978       </div>
 979       <div class="tags">
 980
 981
 982         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>.
 983
 984
 985       </div>
 986     </div>
 987     <div class="padding"></div>
 988
 989     <div class="entry">
 990       <div class="title">
 991         <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>
 992       </div>
 993       <div class="date">
 994         24th September 2015
 995       </div>
 996       <div class="body">
 997         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
 998 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
 999 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
1000 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
1001 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
1002 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
1003 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
1004
1005 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
1006
1007 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
1008 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
1009 by someone else.  I found
1010 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
1011 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
1012 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
1013 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
1014 from him.  Via
1015 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
1016 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
1017 discovered
1018 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
1019 available in Debian.</p>
1020
1021 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
1022 battery stats ever since. Now my
1023 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
1024 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
1025 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
1026 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
1027
1028 <pre>
1029 #!/bin/sh
1030 # Inspired by
1031 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
1032 # See also
1033 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
1034 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
1035
1036 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
1037     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
1038
1039 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
1040     (
1041         printf "timestamp,"
1042         for f in $files; do
1043             printf "%s," $f
1044         done
1045         echo
1046     ) > "$logfile"
1047 fi
1048
1049 log_battery() {
1050     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
1051     # when several log processes run in parallel.
1052     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
1053         for f in $files; do \
1054             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
1055         done)
1056     echo "$msg"
1057 }
1058
1059 cd /sys/class/power_supply
1060
1061 for bat in BAT*; do
1062     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
1063 done
1064 </pre>
1065
1066 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
1067 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
1068 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
1069 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
1070 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
1071 The code for the Debian package
1072 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
1073 available on github</a>.</p>
1074
1075 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
1076
1077 <pre>
1078 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
1079 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
1080 [...]
1081 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
1082 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
1083 </pre>
1084
1085 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
1086 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
1087 battery.</p>
1088
1089 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
1090 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
1091 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
1092 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
1093 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
1094 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
1095 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
1096 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
1097 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
1098 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
1099 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
1100 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
1101 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
1102 Linux too.</p>
1103
1104 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
1105 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
1106 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
1107 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
1108 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
1109 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
1110 load).</p>
1111
1112 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
1113 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
1114 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
1115 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
1116 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
1117 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
1118 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
1119 those.</p>
1120
1121 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
1122 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
1123 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
1124 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
1125 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
1126 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
1127 specific.</p>
1128
1129       </div>
1130       <div class="tags">
1131
1132
1133         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>.
1134
1135
1136       </div>
1137     </div>
1138     <div class="padding"></div>
1139
1140     <div class="entry">
1141       <div class="title">
1142         <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>
1143       </div>
1144       <div class="date">
1145          5th July 2015
1146       </div>
1147       <div class="body">
1148         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
1149 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
1150 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
1151 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
1152 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
1153 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
1154 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
1155 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
1156 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
1157 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
1158 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
1159
1160 <p>One tip I got was to use the
1161 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
1162 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
1163 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
1164 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
1165 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
1166 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
1167
1168 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
1169 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
1170 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
1171 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
1172 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
1173 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
1174 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
1175 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
1176 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
1177 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
1178 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
1179 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
1180 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
1181 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
1182 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
1183
1184 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
1185 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
1186 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
1187 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
1188
1189 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
1190 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
1191
1192 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
1193 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
1194 different
1195 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
1196 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
1197
1198       </div>
1199       <div class="tags">
1200
1201
1202         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>.
1203
1204
1205       </div>
1206     </div>
1207     <div class="padding"></div>
1208
1209     <div class="entry">
1210       <div class="title">
1211         <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>
1212       </div>
1213       <div class="date">
1214          3rd July 2015
1215       </div>
1216       <div class="body">
1217         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
1218 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
1219 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
1220 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
1221 flickering.</p>
1222
1223 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
1224 still as
1225 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
1226 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
1227 good help from
1228 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
1229 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
1230 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
1231 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
1232 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
1233 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
1234 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
1235 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
1236 deteriorated since X41.</p>
1237
1238 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
1239 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
1240 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
1241 have suggestions.</p>
1242
1243 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
1244 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
1245 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
1246
1247       </div>
1248       <div class="tags">
1249
1250
1251         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>.
1252
1253
1254       </div>
1255     </div>
1256     <div class="padding"></div>
1257
1258     <div class="entry">
1259       <div class="title">
1260         <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>
1261       </div>
1262       <div class="date">
1263         22nd November 2014
1264       </div>
1265       <div class="body">
1266         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
1267 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
1268 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
1269 courtesy of
1270 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
1271 Schubert</a> and
1272 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
1273 McVittie</a>.
1274
1275 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
1276 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
1277 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
1278 you upgrade:</p>
1279
1280 <p><blockquote><pre>
1281 Package: systemd-sysv
1282 Pin: release o=Debian
1283 Pin-Priority: -1
1284 </pre></blockquote><p>
1285
1286 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
1287 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
1288 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
1289 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
1290 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
1291
1292 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
1293 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
1294 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
1295 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
1296 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
1297 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
1298
1299 <p><blockquote><pre>
1300 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
1301 </pre></blockquote><p>
1302
1303 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
1304
1305 <p><blockquote><pre>
1306 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
1307 </pre></blockquote><p>
1308
1309 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
1310 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
1311
1312 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
1313 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
1314 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
1315 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
1316 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
1317 Jessie is released.</p>
1318
1319 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
1320 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
1321 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
1322 line.</p>
1323
1324       </div>
1325       <div class="tags">
1326
1327
1328         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>.
1329
1330
1331       </div>
1332     </div>
1333     <div class="padding"></div>
1334
1335     <div class="entry">
1336       <div class="title">
1337         <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>
1338       </div>
1339       <div class="date">
1340         10th November 2014
1341       </div>
1342       <div class="body">
1343         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
1344 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
1345 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
1346
1347 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
1348 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
1349 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
1350 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
1351 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
1352 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
1353 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
1354 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
1355 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
1356 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
1357 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
1358 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
1359 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
1360 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
1361 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
1362
1363 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
1364 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
1365 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
1366 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
1367 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
1368 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
1369 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
1370 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
1371 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
1372 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
1373 were fairly easy, and
1374 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
1375 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
1376 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
1377 useful approach.</p>
1378
1379 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
1380 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
1381 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
1382 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
1383 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
1384 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
1385 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
1386 this:</p>
1387
1388 <p><blockquote><pre>
1389 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
1390   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
1391 </pre></blockquote></p>
1392
1393 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
1394 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
1395
1396 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
1397 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
1398 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
1399 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
1400 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
1401 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
1402 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
1403 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
1404 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
1405 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
1406 system.</p>
1407
1408 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
1409 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
1410 SMTorP. :)</p>
1411
1412       </div>
1413       <div class="tags">
1414
1415
1416         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>.
1417
1418
1419       </div>
1420     </div>
1421     <div class="padding"></div>
1422
1423     <div class="entry">
1424       <div class="title">
1425         <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>
1426       </div>
1427       <div class="date">
1428         22nd October 2014
1429       </div>
1430       <div class="body">
1431         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
1432 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
1433 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
1434 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
1435 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
1436 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
1437 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
1438 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
1439 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
1440 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
1441 lists I recently took over:</p>
1442
1443 <p><blockquote><pre>
1444 % time listadmin xiph
1445 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1446 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
1447
1448 real    0m1.709s
1449 user    0m0.232s
1450 sys     0m0.012s
1451 %
1452 </pre></blockquote></p>
1453
1454 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
1455 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
1456 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
1457 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
1458 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
1459 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
1460 program.</p>
1461
1462 <p>If you install
1463 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
1464 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
1465 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
1466
1467 <p><blockquote><pre>
1468 username username@example.org
1469 spamlevel 23
1470 default discard
1471 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
1472
1473 password secret
1474 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
1475 mailman-list@lists.example.com
1476
1477 password hidden
1478 other-list@otherserver.example.org
1479 </pre></blockquote></p>
1480
1481 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
1482 learn the details.</p>
1483
1484 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
1485 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
1486 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
1487 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
1488
1489 <p><blockquote><pre>
1490 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
1491 </pre></blockquote></p>
1492
1493 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
1494 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
1495 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
1496 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
1497 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
1498 email.</p>
1499
1500 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
1501 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
1502 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
1503 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
1504 software.</p>
1505
1506 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1507 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1508 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1509
1510 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
1511 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
1512 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
1513 sure why.</p>
1514
1515       </div>
1516       <div class="tags">
1517
1518
1519         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>.
1520
1521
1522       </div>
1523     </div>
1524     <div class="padding"></div>
1525
1526     <div class="entry">
1527       <div class="title">
1528         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
1529       </div>
1530       <div class="date">
1531         17th October 2014
1532       </div>
1533       <div class="body">
1534         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
1535 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
1536 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
1537 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
1538 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
1539 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
1540 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
1541
1542 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
1543 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
1544 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
1545 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
1546 of this story.)</p>
1547
1548 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
1549 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
1550 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
1551 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
1552 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
1553 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
1554 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
1555 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
1556 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
1557 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
1558
1559 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
1560 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
1561 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
1562 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
1563
1564 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
1565 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
1566
1567 <p><blockquote><pre>
1568 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
1569 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
1570 </pre></blockquote></p>
1571
1572 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
1573 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
1574 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
1575 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
1576 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
1577 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
1578 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
1579 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
1580
1581 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
1582 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
1583
1584 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
1585 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
1586 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
1587 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
1588 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
1589
1590 <p><blockquote><pre>
1591 Task: isenkram-packages
1592 Section: hardware
1593 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1594  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1595  proposed.
1596 Test-new-install: show show
1597 Relevance: 8
1598 Packages: for-current-hardware
1599
1600 Task: isenkram-firmware
1601 Section: hardware
1602 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1603  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
1604  packages are proposed.
1605 Test-new-install: mark show
1606 Relevance: 8
1607 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
1608 </pre></blockquote></p>
1609
1610 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
1611 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
1612 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
1613 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
1614 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
1615
1616 <p><blockquote><pre>
1617 #!/bin/sh
1618 #
1619 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
1620 export PATH
1621 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1622 </pre></blockquote></p>
1623
1624 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
1625 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
1626
1627 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
1628 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
1629 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
1630 install.</p>
1631
1632 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
1633 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
1634 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
1635
1636       </div>
1637       <div class="tags">
1638
1639
1640         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>.
1641
1642
1643       </div>
1644     </div>
1645     <div class="padding"></div>
1646
1647     <div class="entry">
1648       <div class="title">
1649         <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>
1650       </div>
1651       <div class="date">
1652          4th October 2014
1653       </div>
1654       <div class="body">
1655         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
1656 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
1657 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
1658 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
1659
1660 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
1661
1662 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
1663 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
1664 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
1665
1666       </div>
1667       <div class="tags">
1668
1669
1670         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>.
1671
1672
1673       </div>
1674     </div>
1675     <div class="padding"></div>
1676
1677     <div class="entry">
1678       <div class="title">
1679         <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>
1680       </div>
1681       <div class="date">
1682          4th October 2014
1683       </div>
1684       <div class="body">
1685         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
1686 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
1687 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
1688 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
1689 Dibb.</p>
1690
1691 <p>I just wrapped up
1692 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
1693 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
1694 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
1695 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
1696 0.17.</p>
1697
1698 <ul>
1699
1700  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
1701  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
1702    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
1703  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
1704  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
1705  <li>Fix include orders</li>
1706  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
1707  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
1708  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
1709    the palette size is the same.</li>
1710  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
1711  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
1712  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
1713  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
1714    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
1715
1716 </ul>
1717
1718 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
1719 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
1720 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
1721
1722       </div>
1723       <div class="tags">
1724
1725
1726         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>.
1727
1728
1729       </div>
1730     </div>
1731     <div class="padding"></div>
1732
1733     <div class="entry">
1734       <div class="title">
1735         <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>
1736       </div>
1737       <div class="date">
1738         26th September 2014
1739       </div>
1740       <div class="body">
1741         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1742 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
1743 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
1744 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
1745 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
1746 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
1747 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
1748 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
1749 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
1750 future.  The
1751 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
1752 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
1753 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
1754 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
1755 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
1756
1757 <p>First, download the test ISO via
1758 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
1759 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
1760 or rsync (use
1761 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
1762 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
1763 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
1764 install with some tweaking.</p>
1765
1766 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
1767 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
1768
1769 <p><blockquote><pre>
1770 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
1771 </pre></blockquote></p>
1772
1773 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
1774 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
1775 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
1776 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
1777
1778 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
1779 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
1780 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
1781 your need.</p>
1782
1783 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
1784 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
1785 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
1786 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
1787 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
1788 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
1789 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
1790 days.</p>
1791
1792 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
1793 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
1794 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
1795 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
1796 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
1797 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
1798 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
1799 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
1800 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
1801
1802 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
1803 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
1804 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
1805
1806       </div>
1807       <div class="tags">
1808
1809
1810         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>.
1811
1812
1813       </div>
1814     </div>
1815     <div class="padding"></div>
1816
1817     <div class="entry">
1818       <div class="title">
1819         <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>
1820       </div>
1821       <div class="date">
1822         25th September 2014
1823       </div>
1824       <div class="body">
1825         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
1826 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
1827 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
1828 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
1829 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
1830 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
1831 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
1832 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
1833 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
1834 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
1835 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
1836 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
1837 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
1838
1839 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
1840 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
1841 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
1842 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
1843 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
1844 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
1845 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
1846 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
1847 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
1848 list</a>. :)</p>
1849
1850       </div>
1851       <div class="tags">
1852
1853
1854         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>.
1855
1856
1857       </div>
1858     </div>
1859     <div class="padding"></div>
1860
1861     <div class="entry">
1862       <div class="title">
1863         <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>
1864       </div>
1865       <div class="date">
1866         16th September 2014
1867       </div>
1868       <div class="body">
1869         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
1870 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
1871 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
1872 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
1873 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
1874 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
1875 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
1876 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
1877 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
1878 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
1879 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
1880 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
1881 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
1882 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
1883
1884 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
1885 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
1886 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
1887 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
1888 depend on the small and clever package
1889 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
1890 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
1891 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
1892 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
1893 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
1894 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
1895 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
1896 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
1897 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
1898 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
1899 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
1900
1901 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
1902 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
1903 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
1904 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
1905 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
1906 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
1907 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
1908 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
1909 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
1910 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
1911 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
1912 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
1913 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
1914 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
1915 dialog.</p>
1916
1917 <p><table>
1918
1919 <tr>
1920 <th>Machine/setup</th>
1921 <th>Original tasksel</th>
1922 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
1923 <th>Reduction</th>
1924 </tr>
1925
1926 <tr>
1927 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
1928 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
1929 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
1930 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
1931 </tr>
1932
1933 <tr>
1934 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
1935 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
1936 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
1937 <td>23 min 40%</td>
1938 </tr>
1939
1940 <tr>
1941 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
1942 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
1943 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
1944 <td>11 min 50%</td>
1945 </tr>
1946
1947 <tr>
1948 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
1949 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
1950 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
1951 <td>2 min 33%</td>
1952 </tr>
1953
1954 <tr>
1955 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
1956 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
1957 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
1958 <td>4 min 21%</td>
1959 </tr>
1960
1961 </table></p>
1962
1963 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
1964 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
1965 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
1966 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
1967 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
1968 installed.</p>
1969
1970 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
1971 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
1972 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
1973 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
1974 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
1975 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
1976 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
1977 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
1978 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
1979 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
1980 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
1981 for the entire installation.</p>
1982
1983 <p>I've implemented this in the
1984 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
1985 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
1986 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
1987 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
1988 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
1989
1990 <p><blockquote><pre>
1991 #!/bin/sh
1992 set -e
1993 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
1994 info() {
1995     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
1996 }
1997 error() {
1998     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
1999 }
2000 override_install() {
2001     apt-install eatmydata || true
2002     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
2003         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
2004             file=/usr/bin/$bin
2005             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
2006             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
2007                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
2008                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
2009                     > /target$file.edu
2010                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
2011                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
2012                     --rename --quiet --add $file
2013                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
2014             else
2015                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
2016             fi
2017         done
2018     else
2019         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
2020     fi
2021 }
2022
2023 override_install
2024 </pre></blockquote></p>
2025
2026 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
2027 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
2028
2029 <p><blockquote><pre>
2030 #! /bin/sh -e
2031 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
2032 error() {
2033     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
2034 }
2035 remove_install_override() {
2036     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
2037         file=/usr/bin/$bin
2038         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
2039             rm /target$file
2040             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
2041                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
2042             rm /target$file.edu
2043         else
2044             error "Missing divert for $file."
2045         fi
2046     done
2047     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
2048 }
2049
2050 remove_install_override
2051 </pre></blockquote></p>
2052
2053 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
2054 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
2055 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
2056
2057 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
2058 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
2059 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
2060 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
2061 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
2062 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
2063 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
2064 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
2065 everyone.</p>
2066
2067 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
2068 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
2069 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
2070 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
2071
2072 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
2073 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
2074 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
2075 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
2076 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
2077
2078 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
2079 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
2080 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
2081 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
2082 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
2083
2084       </div>
2085       <div class="tags">
2086
2087
2088         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>.
2089
2090
2091       </div>
2092     </div>
2093     <div class="padding"></div>
2094
2095     <div class="entry">
2096       <div class="title">
2097         <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>
2098       </div>
2099       <div class="date">
2100         10th September 2014
2101       </div>
2102       <div class="body">
2103         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
2104 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
2105 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
2106 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
2107 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
2108 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
2109 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
2110 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
2111 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
2112 those problems are gone now.</p>
2113
2114 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
2115 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
2116 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
2117 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
2118 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
2119
2120 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
2121 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
2122 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
2123
2124 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
2125 line:</p>
2126
2127 <p><blockquote><pre>
2128 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
2129 </pre></blockquote></p>
2130
2131 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
2132 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
2133 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
2134 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
2135
2136 <p><blockquote><pre>
2137 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
2138 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
2139 %
2140 </pre></blockquote></p>
2141
2142 <p>Now if only
2143 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
2144 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
2145 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
2146 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
2147 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
2148 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
2149 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
2150 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
2151 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
2152
2153       </div>
2154       <div class="tags">
2155
2156
2157         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>.
2158
2159
2160       </div>
2161     </div>
2162     <div class="padding"></div>
2163
2164     <div class="entry">
2165       <div class="title">
2166         <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>
2167       </div>
2168       <div class="date">
2169         17th June 2014
2170       </div>
2171       <div class="body">
2172         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2173 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
2174 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
2175 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
2176 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
2177
2178 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
2179 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
2180 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
2181 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
2182 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
2183 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
2184 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
2185 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
2186 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
2187 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
2188 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
2189 goals.</p>
2190
2191 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
2192 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
2193 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
2194 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
2195 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
2196 chapters together into one large web page (aka
2197 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
2198 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
2199 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
2200 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
2201 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
2202 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
2203 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
2204 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
2205 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
2206 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
2207 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
2208 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
2209 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
2210 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
2211 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
2212 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
2213 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
2214 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
2215
2216 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
2217 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
2218 track the English original.  For this we use the
2219 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
2220 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
2221 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
2222 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
2223 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
2224 files), which the translations update with the native language
2225 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
2226 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
2227 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
2228 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
2229 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
2230 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
2231 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
2232 of the documentation.</p>
2233
2234 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
2235 recommend using
2236 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
2237 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
2238 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
2239 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
2240 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
2241 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
2242 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
2243 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
2244
2245 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
2246 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
2247 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
2248 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
2249 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
2250 translated images by storing translated versions in
2251 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
2252 package maintainers know more.</p>
2253
2254 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
2255 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
2256 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
2257 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
2258 PDF version</a> or the
2259 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
2260 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
2261 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
2262
2263 <p>To learn more, check out
2264 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
2265 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
2266 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
2267 manual on the wiki</a> and
2268 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
2269 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
2270
2271       </div>
2272       <div class="tags">
2273
2274
2275         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>.
2276
2277
2278       </div>
2279     </div>
2280     <div class="padding"></div>
2281
2282     <div class="entry">
2283       <div class="title">
2284         <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>
2285       </div>
2286       <div class="date">
2287         23rd April 2014
2288       </div>
2289       <div class="body">
2290         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
2291 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
2292 So I implemented one, using
2293 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
2294 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
2295 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
2296 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
2297 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
2298 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
2299
2300 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
2301 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
2302 packages to install.  The first part is in
2303 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
2304 this:</p>
2305
2306 <p><blockquote><pre>
2307 Task: isenkram
2308 Section: hardware
2309 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2310  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2311  proposed.
2312 Test-new-install: mark show
2313 Relevance: 8
2314 Packages: for-current-hardware
2315 </pre></blockquote></p>
2316
2317 <p>The second part is in
2318 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
2319 this:</p>
2320
2321 <p><blockquote><pre>
2322 #!/bin/sh
2323 #
2324 (
2325     isenkram-lookup
2326     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2327 ) | sort -u
2328 </pre></blockquote></p>
2329
2330 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
2331 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
2332 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
2333 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
2334 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
2335 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
2336
2337 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
2338 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
2339 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
2340 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
2341 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
2342 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
2343 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
2344 the python-apt code (bug
2345 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
2346 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
2347 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
2348 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
2349 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
2350 unstable today.</p>
2351
2352 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
2353 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
2354 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
2355 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
2356 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
2357 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
2358 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
2359 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
2360 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
2361
2362 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
2363 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
2364 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
2365 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
2366 package.  See also
2367 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
2368 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
2369 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
2370 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
2371
2372       </div>
2373       <div class="tags">
2374
2375
2376         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>.
2377
2378
2379       </div>
2380     </div>
2381     <div class="padding"></div>
2382
2383     <div class="entry">
2384       <div class="title">
2385         <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>
2386       </div>
2387       <div class="date">
2388         15th April 2014
2389       </div>
2390       <div class="body">
2391         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2392 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
2393 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
2394 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
2395 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
2396 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
2397
2398 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
2399 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
2400 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
2401 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
2402 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
2403 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
2404 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
2405
2406 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
2407 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
2408 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
2409 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
2410 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
2411 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
2412 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
2413 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
2414 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
2415 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
2416 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
2417 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
2418
2419 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
2420 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
2421 become root:</p>
2422
2423 <p><pre>
2424 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2425   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2426   u-boot-tools
2427 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2428   freedom-maker
2429 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2430 </pre></p>
2431
2432 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2433 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
2434 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
2435 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
2436 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
2437 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
2438 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
2439 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
2440
2441 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2442 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2443 the preseed values:</p>
2444
2445 <p><pre>
2446 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2447 </pre></p>
2448
2449 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
2450 it still work.</p>
2451
2452 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
2453 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
2454 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
2455 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
2456 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
2457 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
2458 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
2459
2460 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2461 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2462 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2463 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2464 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2465 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2466
2467       </div>
2468       <div class="tags">
2469
2470
2471         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>.
2472
2473
2474       </div>
2475     </div>
2476     <div class="padding"></div>
2477
2478     <div class="entry">
2479       <div class="title">
2480         <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>
2481       </div>
2482       <div class="date">
2483          9th April 2014
2484       </div>
2485       <div class="body">
2486         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
2487 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
2488 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
2489 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
2490 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
2491 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
2492 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
2493 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
2494 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
2495 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
2496 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
2497 have looked at a system called
2498 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
2499 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
2500
2501 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
2502 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
2503 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
2504 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
2505 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
2506 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
2507 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
2508 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
2509 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
2510 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
2511 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
2512 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
2513 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
2514
2515 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
2516 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
2517 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
2518 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
2519 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
2520 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
2521 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
2522 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
2523 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
2524 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
2525 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
2526 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
2527 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
2528 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
2529 account.</p>
2530
2531 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
2532 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
2533 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
2534 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
2535 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
2536 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
2537 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
2538
2539 <p><blockquote><pre>
2540 [s3c]
2541 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2542 backend-login: API-login
2543 backend-password: API-password
2544 fs-passphrase: local-password
2545 </pre></blockquote></p>
2546
2547 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
2548 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
2549 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
2550 details and password to create it:</p>
2551
2552 <p><blockquote><pre>
2553 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
2554 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2555   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2556 Enter backend login:
2557 Enter backend password:
2558 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
2559 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
2560 Enter encryption password:
2561 Confirm encryption password:
2562 Generating random encryption key...
2563 Creating metadata tables...
2564 Dumping metadata...
2565 ..objects..
2566 ..blocks..
2567 ..inodes..
2568 ..inode_blocks..
2569 ..symlink_targets..
2570 ..names..
2571 ..contents..
2572 ..ext_attributes..
2573 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2574 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
2575 # </pre></blockquote></p>
2576
2577 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
2578
2579 <p><blockquote><pre>
2580 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2581   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2582 Using 4 upload threads.
2583 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
2584 Reading metadata...
2585 ..objects..
2586 ..blocks..
2587 ..inodes..
2588 ..inode_blocks..
2589 ..symlink_targets..
2590 ..names..
2591 ..contents..
2592 ..ext_attributes..
2593 Mounting filesystem...
2594 # df -h /s3ql
2595 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
2596 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
2597 #
2598 </pre></blockquote></p>
2599
2600 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
2601 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
2602 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
2603 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
2604 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
2605 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
2606
2607 <p><blockquote><pre>
2608 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
2609 #
2610 </pre></blockquote></p>
2611
2612 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
2613 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
2614 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
2615 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
2616 file system:</p>
2617
2618 <p><blockquote><pre>
2619 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
2620 Using cached metadata.
2621 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
2622 Checking DB integrity...
2623 Creating temporary extra indices...
2624 Checking lost+found...
2625 Checking cached objects...
2626 Checking names (refcounts)...
2627 Checking contents (names)...
2628 Checking contents (inodes)...
2629 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
2630 Checking objects (reference counts)...
2631 Checking objects (backend)...
2632 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
2633 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
2634 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
2635 Checking objects (sizes)...
2636 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
2637 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
2638 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
2639 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
2640 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
2641 Checking inodes (sizes)...
2642 Checking extended attributes (names)...
2643 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
2644 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
2645 Checking directory reachability...
2646 Checking unix conventions...
2647 Checking referential integrity...
2648 Dropping temporary indices...
2649 Backing up old metadata...
2650 Dumping metadata...
2651 ..objects..
2652 ..blocks..
2653 ..inodes..
2654 ..inode_blocks..
2655 ..symlink_targets..
2656 ..names..
2657 ..contents..
2658 ..ext_attributes..
2659 Compressing and uploading metadata...
2660 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
2661 #
2662 </pre></blockquote></p>
2663
2664 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
2665 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
2666 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
2667 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
2668 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
2669 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
2670 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
2671 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
2672 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
2673 working set.</p>
2674
2675 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
2676 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
2677 busy:</p>
2678
2679 <p><blockquote><pre>
2680 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2681   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
2682 Using 8 upload threads.
2683 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
2684 #
2685 </pre></blockquote></p>
2686
2687 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
2688 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
2689 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
2690 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
2691 s3qlctrl:
2692
2693 <p><blockquote><pre>
2694 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
2695 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
2696 #
2697 </pre></blockquote></p>
2698
2699 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
2700 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
2701 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
2702 a report:</p>
2703
2704 <p><blockquote><pre>
2705 # s3qlstat /s3ql
2706 Directory entries:    9141
2707 Inodes:               9143
2708 Data blocks:          8851
2709 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
2710 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
2711 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
2712 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
2713 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
2714 #
2715 </pre></blockquote></p>
2716
2717 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
2718 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
2719 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
2720 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
2721 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
2722 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
2723 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
2724 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
2725 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
2726 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
2727 best.</p>
2728
2729 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
2730 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
2731 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
2732 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
2733 poster is titled
2734 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
2735 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
2736 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
2737 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
2738 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
2739
2740 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
2741 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
2742 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
2743 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
2744 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
2745 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
2746 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
2747 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
2748
2749 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
2750 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
2751 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
2752 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
2753 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
2754 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
2755 only read from it.</p>
2756
2757 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2758 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2759 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2760
2761       </div>
2762       <div class="tags">
2763
2764
2765         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>.
2766
2767
2768       </div>
2769     </div>
2770     <div class="padding"></div>
2771
2772     <div class="entry">
2773       <div class="title">
2774         <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>
2775       </div>
2776       <div class="date">
2777         14th March 2014
2778       </div>
2779       <div class="body">
2780         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2781 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
2782 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
2783 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
2784 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
2785 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
2786 release (0.2).</p>
2787
2788 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
2789 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
2790 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
2791 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
2792 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
2793 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
2794 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
2795 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
2796 and build using
2797 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
2798 with a user with sudo access to become root:
2799
2800 <pre>
2801 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2802   freedom-maker
2803 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2804   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2805   u-boot-tools
2806 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2807 </pre>
2808
2809 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2810 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
2811 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
2812 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
2813 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
2814 kpartx call.</p>
2815
2816 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2817 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2818 the preseed values:</p>
2819
2820 <pre>
2821 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
2822 </pre>
2823
2824 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
2825 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
2826 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
2827 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
2828 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
2829 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
2830
2831 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2832 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2833 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2834 irc.debian.org)</a> and
2835 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2836 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
2837
2838       </div>
2839       <div class="tags">
2840
2841
2842         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>.
2843
2844
2845       </div>
2846     </div>
2847     <div class="padding"></div>
2848
2849     <div class="entry">
2850       <div class="title">
2851         <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>
2852       </div>
2853       <div class="date">
2854         22nd February 2014
2855       </div>
2856       <div class="body">
2857         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
2858 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
2859 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
2860 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
2861 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
2862 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
2863 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
2864 proper home since then.</p>
2865
2866 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
2867 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
2868 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
2869 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
2870 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
2871
2872 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
2873 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
2874 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
2875 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
2876 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
2877 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
2878 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
2879 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
2880 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
2881
2882       </div>
2883       <div class="tags">
2884
2885
2886         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>.
2887
2888
2889       </div>
2890     </div>
2891     <div class="padding"></div>
2892
2893     <div class="entry">
2894       <div class="title">
2895         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
2896       </div>
2897       <div class="date">
2898          3rd February 2014
2899       </div>
2900       <div class="body">
2901         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
2902 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
2903 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
2904 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
2905 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
2906 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
2907 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
2908 <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>,
2909 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
2910
2911 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
2912 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
2913 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
2914 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
2915 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
2916 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
2917
2918 <p><blockquote><pre>
2919 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
2920 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
2921 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
2922 dhclient /dev/eth0
2923 </pre></blockquote></p>
2924
2925 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
2926 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
2927 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
2928
2929 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
2930 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
2931 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
2932 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
2933 side.</p>
2934
2935 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
2936 stuff:</p>
2937
2938 <p><blockquote><pre>
2939 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2940 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
2941 EOF
2942 apt-get update
2943 apt-get dist-upgrade
2944 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
2945     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
2946 update-alternatives --config runsystem
2947 </pre></blockquote></p>
2948
2949 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
2950 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
2951 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
2952 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
2953 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
2954 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
2955 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
2956 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
2957 ssh instead.
2958
2959 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
2960 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
2961 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
2962 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
2963 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
2964 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
2965
2966 <p><blockquote><pre>
2967 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
2968 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
2969 EOF
2970 </pre></blockquote></p>
2971
2972 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
2973 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
2974 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
2975 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
2976
2977 <p><blockquote><pre>
2978 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
2979 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
2980 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
2981 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
2982 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
2983 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
2984 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
2985 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
2986 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
2987 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
2988 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
2989 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
2990 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
2991 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
2992 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
2993 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
2994 #
2995 </pre></blockquote></p>
2996
2997 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
2998 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
2999 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
3000 command line stuff.<p>
3001
3002       </div>
3003       <div class="tags">
3004
3005
3006         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>.
3007
3008
3009       </div>
3010     </div>
3011     <div class="padding"></div>
3012
3013     <div class="entry">
3014       <div class="title">
3015         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
3016       </div>
3017       <div class="date">
3018         14th January 2014
3019       </div>
3020       <div class="body">
3021         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
3022 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
3023 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
3024 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
3025 the source.  The company behind it provide
3026 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
3027 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
3028 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
3029 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
3030 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
3031 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
3032 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
3033 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
3034 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
3035 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
3036 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
3037 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
3038 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
3039 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
3040 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
3041 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
3042 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
3043 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
3044 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
3045
3046 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
3047
3048 <ul>
3049
3050   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
3051   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
3052   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
3053
3054 </ul>
3055
3056 <p>You can
3057 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3058 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
3059 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
3060 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3061 include a test suite check.</p>
3062
3063       </div>
3064       <div class="tags">
3065
3066
3067         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>.
3068
3069
3070       </div>
3071     </div>
3072     <div class="padding"></div>
3073
3074     <div class="entry">
3075       <div class="title">
3076         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
3077       </div>
3078       <div class="date">
3079         24th November 2013
3080       </div>
3081       <div class="body">
3082         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
3083 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
3084 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
3085 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
3086 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
3087 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
3088 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
3089 is working on.  I checked the
3090 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
3091 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
3092 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
3093 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
3094 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
3095 These are the release notes:</p>
3096
3097 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
3098
3099 <ul>
3100
3101   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
3102    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
3103    up.</li>
3104
3105   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
3106
3107   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
3108    Matthias Klose.</li>
3109
3110   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
3111    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
3112
3113   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
3114    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
3115    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
3116
3117 </ul>
3118
3119 <p>You can
3120 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3121 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
3122 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
3123 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3124 include a testsuite check.</p>
3125
3126       </div>
3127       <div class="tags">
3128
3129
3130         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>.
3131
3132
3133       </div>
3134     </div>
3135     <div class="padding"></div>
3136
3137     <div class="entry">
3138       <div class="title">
3139         <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>
3140       </div>
3141       <div class="date">
3142          2nd November 2013
3143       </div>
3144       <div class="body">
3145         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
3146 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
3147 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
3148 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
3149 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
3150
3151 <p><pre>
3152 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
3153 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
3154 # Provides:          rsyslog
3155 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
3156 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
3157 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
3158 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
3159 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
3160 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
3161 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
3162 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
3163 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
3164 ### END INIT INFO
3165 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
3166 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
3167 </pre></p>
3168
3169 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
3170 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
3171 info/comments.</p>
3172
3173 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
3174 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
3175
3176 <p><pre>
3177 #!/bin/sh
3178
3179 # Define LSB log_* functions.
3180 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
3181 # and status_of_proc is working.
3182 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
3183
3184 #
3185 # Function that starts the daemon/service
3186
3187 #
3188 do_start()
3189 {
3190         # Return
3191         #   0 if daemon has been started
3192         #   1 if daemon was already running
3193         #   2 if daemon could not be started
3194         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
3195                 || return 1
3196         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
3197                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
3198                 || return 2
3199         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
3200         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
3201         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
3202 }
3203
3204 #
3205 # Function that stops the daemon/service
3206 #
3207 do_stop()
3208 {
3209         # Return
3210         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
3211         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
3212         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
3213         #   other if a failure occurred
3214         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3215         RETVAL="$?"
3216         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
3217         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
3218         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
3219         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
3220         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
3221         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
3222         # sleep for some time.
3223         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
3224         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
3225         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
3226         rm -f $PIDFILE
3227         return "$RETVAL"
3228 }
3229
3230 #
3231 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
3232 #
3233 do_reload() {
3234         #
3235         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
3236         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
3237         # then implement that here.
3238         #
3239         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3240         return 0
3241 }
3242
3243 SCRIPTNAME=$1
3244 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
3245 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
3246 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
3247     script="$1"
3248     shift
3249     . $script
3250 else
3251     exit 0
3252 fi
3253
3254 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
3255 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
3256
3257 # Exit if the package is not installed
3258 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
3259
3260 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
3261 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
3262
3263 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
3264 . /lib/init/vars.sh
3265
3266 case "$1" in
3267   start)
3268         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
3269         do_start
3270         case "$?" in
3271                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3272                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3273         esac
3274         ;;
3275   stop)
3276         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
3277         do_stop
3278         case "$?" in
3279                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
3280                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
3281         esac
3282         ;;
3283   status)
3284         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
3285         ;;
3286   #reload|force-reload)
3287         #
3288         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
3289         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
3290         #
3291         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
3292         #do_reload
3293         #log_end_msg $?
3294         #;;
3295   restart|force-reload)
3296         #
3297         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
3298         # 'force-reload' alias
3299         #
3300         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
3301         do_stop
3302         case "$?" in
3303           0|1)
3304                 do_start
3305                 case "$?" in
3306                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
3307                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
3308                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
3309                 esac
3310                 ;;
3311           *)
3312                 # Failed to stop
3313                 log_end_msg 1
3314                 ;;
3315         esac
3316         ;;
3317   *)
3318         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
3319         exit 3
3320         ;;
3321 esac
3322
3323 :
3324 </pre></p>
3325
3326 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
3327 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
3328 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
3329 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
3330
3331 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
3332 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
3333 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
3334 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
3335 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
3336
3337       </div>
3338       <div class="tags">
3339
3340
3341         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>.
3342
3343
3344       </div>
3345     </div>
3346     <div class="padding"></div>
3347
3348     <div class="entry">
3349       <div class="title">
3350         <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>
3351       </div>
3352       <div class="date">
3353          1st November 2013
3354       </div>
3355       <div class="body">
3356         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
3357 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
3358 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
3359 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
3360 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
3361 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
3362 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
3363 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
3364 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
3365 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
3366 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
3367 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
3368
3369 <p>The source is now available from
3370 <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>
3371
3372       </div>
3373       <div class="tags">
3374
3375
3376         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>.
3377
3378
3379       </div>
3380     </div>
3381     <div class="padding"></div>
3382
3383     <div class="entry">
3384       <div class="title">
3385         <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>
3386       </div>
3387       <div class="date">
3388         27th October 2013
3389       </div>
3390       <div class="body">
3391         <p>The
3392 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
3393 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
3394 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
3395 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
3396 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
3397 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
3398 of a plan to simplify the build system for
3399 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
3400 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
3401 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
3402 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
3403 Raspberry Pi.</p>
3404
3405 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
3406 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
3407 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
3408 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
3409 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
3410 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
3411 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
3412 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
3413 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
3414 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
3415 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
3416 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
3417 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
3418 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
3419 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
3420 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
3421 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
3422 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
3423 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
3424 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
3425 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
3426 available from
3427 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
3428 upstream project page</a>.</p>
3429
3430 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
3431 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
3432 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
3433 list:</p>
3434
3435 <p><pre>
3436 #!/bin/sh
3437 set -e # Exit on first error
3438 rootdir="$1"
3439 cd "$rootdir"
3440 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
3441 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
3442 EOF
3443 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
3444 # install a kernel somewhere too.
3445 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
3446     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3447 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3448 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
3449 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
3450 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
3451 </pre></p>
3452
3453 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
3454 to build the image:</p>
3455
3456 <pre>
3457 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
3458     --variant minbase \
3459     --arch armel \
3460     --distribution jessie \
3461     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
3462     --image test.img \
3463     --size 600M \
3464     --bootsize 64M \
3465     --boottype vfat \
3466     --log-level debug \
3467     --verbose \
3468     --no-kernel \
3469     --no-extlinux \
3470     --root-password raspberry \
3471     --hostname raspberrypi \
3472     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
3473     --customize `pwd`/customize \
3474     --package netbase \
3475     --package git-core \
3476     --package binutils \
3477     --package ca-certificates \
3478     --package wget \
3479     --package kmod
3480 </pre></p>
3481
3482 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
3483 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
3484 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
3485 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
3486 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
3487 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
3488 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
3489
3490 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
3491 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
3492 build dependency list.</p>
3493
3494 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
3495 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
3496 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
3497 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
3498
3499       </div>
3500       <div class="tags">
3501
3502
3503         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>.
3504
3505
3506       </div>
3507     </div>
3508     <div class="padding"></div>
3509
3510     <div class="entry">
3511       <div class="title">
3512         <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>
3513       </div>
3514       <div class="date">
3515         15th October 2013
3516       </div>
3517       <div class="body">
3518         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
3519 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
3520 these. :)</p>
3521
3522 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
3523 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
3524 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
3525 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
3526 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
3527 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
3528 hope you will to. :)</p>
3529
3530 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
3531 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
3532 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
3533 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
3534 donated.  Are you next?</p>
3535
3536 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
3537 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
3538 statement under the heading
3539 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
3540 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
3541 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
3542 too.</p>
3543
3544       </div>
3545       <div class="tags">
3546
3547
3548         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>.
3549
3550
3551       </div>
3552     </div>
3553     <div class="padding"></div>
3554
3555     <div class="entry">
3556       <div class="title">
3557         <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>
3558       </div>
3559       <div class="date">
3560         27th September 2013
3561       </div>
3562       <div class="body">
3563         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
3564 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
3565 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
3566 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
3567
3568 <ul>
3569
3570 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
3571 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
3572
3573 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
3574 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3575
3576 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
3577 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
3578 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
3579 (Youtube)</li>
3580
3581 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
3582 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
3583
3584 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
3585 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
3586
3587 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
3588 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
3589 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
3590
3591 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
3592 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
3593 (Youtube)</li>
3594
3595 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
3596 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
3597
3598 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
3599 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
3600
3601 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
3602 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
3603 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
3604
3605 </ul>
3606
3607 <p>A larger list is available from
3608 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
3609 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
3610
3611 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
3612 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
3613 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
3614 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
3615 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
3616 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
3617 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
3618 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
3619 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
3620 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3621 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3622
3623       </div>
3624       <div class="tags">
3625
3626
3627         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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>.
3628
3629
3630       </div>
3631     </div>
3632     <div class="padding"></div>
3633
3634     <div class="entry">
3635       <div class="title">
3636         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
3637       </div>
3638       <div class="date">
3639         10th September 2013
3640       </div>
3641       <div class="body">
3642         <p>I was introduced to the
3643 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
3644 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
3645 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
3646 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
3647 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
3648 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
3649 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
3650 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
3651
3652 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
3653 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
3654 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
3655 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
3656 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
3657
3658 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
3659 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
3660 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
3661 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
3662 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
3663 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
3664 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
3665 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
3666 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
3667 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
3668 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
3669 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
3670 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
3671 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
3672 missing in Debian).</p>
3673
3674 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
3675 scripts
3676 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
3677 and a administrative web interface
3678 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
3679 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
3680 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
3681 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
3682 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
3683 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
3684 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
3685 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
3686 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
3687 this is really working yet, see
3688 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
3689 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
3690 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
3691 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
3692 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
3693 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
3694 with lots of half baked features.</p>
3695
3696 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
3697 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
3698 at.</p>
3699
3700 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
3701
3702 <ol>
3703
3704 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
3705 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
3706 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
3707 to the Debian installer:<p>
3708 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
3709
3710 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
3711 install on.</li>
3712
3713 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
3714 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
3715
3716 </ol>
3717
3718 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
3719
3720 <ol>
3721
3722 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
3723 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
3724 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
3725 <pre>
3726 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
3727 </pre></li>
3728 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
3729 <pre>
3730 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
3731    apt-key add -
3732 apt-get update
3733 apt-get install freedombox-setup
3734 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
3735 </pre></li>
3736 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
3737
3738 </ol>
3739
3740 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
3741 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
3742 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
3743 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
3744 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
3745
3746 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
3747 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
3748 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
3749 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
3750
3751 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
3752 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
3753 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
3754 irc.debian.org and the
3755 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
3756 mailing list</a>.</p>
3757
3758 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
3759 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
3760 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
3761 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
3762 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
3763 default password is 'secret'.</p>
3764
3765       </div>
3766       <div class="tags">
3767
3768
3769         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>.
3770
3771
3772       </div>
3773     </div>
3774     <div class="padding"></div>
3775
3776     <div class="entry">
3777       <div class="title">
3778         <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>
3779       </div>
3780       <div class="date">
3781         18th August 2013
3782       </div>
3783       <div class="body">
3784         <p>Earlier, I reported about
3785 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
3786 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
3787 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
3788 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
3789 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
3790 currently on the disk.</p>
3791
3792 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
3793 <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>
3794 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
3795 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
3796 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
3797 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
3798 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
3799 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
3800 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
3801 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
3802 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
3803 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
3804 the broken disks.</p>
3805
3806       </div>
3807       <div class="tags">
3808
3809
3810         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>.
3811
3812
3813       </div>
3814     </div>
3815     <div class="padding"></div>
3816
3817     <div class="entry">
3818       <div class="title">
3819         <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>
3820       </div>
3821       <div class="date">
3822         17th July 2013
3823       </div>
3824       <div class="body">
3825         <p>Today I switched to
3826 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
3827 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
3828 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
3829 <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
3830 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
3831 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
3832 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
3833 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
3834 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
3835 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
3836 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
3837 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
3838 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
3839 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
3840 station from now on.</p>
3841
3842 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
3843 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
3844 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
3845 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
3846 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
3847 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
3848 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
3849 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
3850 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
3851 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
3852 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
3853 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
3854
3855 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
3856 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
3857 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
3858 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
3859 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
3860 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
3861 parameters are tuned:</p>
3862
3863 <ul>
3864
3865 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
3866     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
3867
3868 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
3869     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
3870     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
3871
3872 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
3873     systems.</li>
3874
3875 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
3876     /etc/fstab.</li>
3877
3878 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
3879
3880 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
3881     cron.daily).</li>
3882
3883 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
3884     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
3885
3886 </ul>
3887
3888 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
3889 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
3890 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
3891 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
3892 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
3893 from getting the data on the disk (see
3894 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
3895 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
3896 right thing to do.</p>
3897
3898 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
3899 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
3900 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
3901
3902 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
3903 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
3904 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
3905 instead of during my work.</p>
3906
3907 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
3908 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
3909
3910 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
3911 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
3912 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
3913
3914 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
3915 there.</p>
3916
3917 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
3918 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
3919 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
3920 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
3921 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
3922 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
3923 back.</p>
3924
3925       </div>
3926       <div class="tags">
3927
3928
3929         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>.
3930
3931
3932       </div>
3933     </div>
3934     <div class="padding"></div>
3935
3936     <div class="entry">
3937       <div class="title">
3938         <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>
3939       </div>
3940       <div class="date">
3941         10th July 2013
3942       </div>
3943       <div class="body">
3944         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
3945 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
3946 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
3947 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
3948 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
3949 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
3950 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
3951 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
3952
3953 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
3954 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
3955 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
3956 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
3957 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
3958 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
3959 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
3960 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
3961 lock up when I download a new
3962 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
3963 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
3964 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
3965
3966 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3967 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
3968 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3969 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
3970 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3971 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3972
3973 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
3974 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
3975 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
3976 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
3977 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
3978 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
3979
3980 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
3981 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
3982 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
3983 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
3984 exist).</p>
3985
3986       </div>
3987       <div class="tags">
3988
3989
3990         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>.
3991
3992
3993       </div>
3994     </div>
3995     <div class="padding"></div>
3996
3997     <div class="entry">
3998       <div class="title">
3999         <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>
4000       </div>
4001       <div class="date">
4002          9th July 2013
4003       </div>
4004       <div class="body">
4005         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
4006 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
4007 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
4008 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
4009 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4010 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
4011 Bitraf</a>.</p>
4012
4013 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
4014 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
4015 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
4016 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
4017 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
4018
4019       </div>
4020       <div class="tags">
4021
4022
4023         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>.
4024
4025
4026       </div>
4027     </div>
4028     <div class="padding"></div>
4029
4030     <div class="entry">
4031       <div class="title">
4032         <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>
4033       </div>
4034       <div class="date">
4035          5th July 2013
4036       </div>
4037       <div class="body">
4038         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
4039 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
4040 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
4041 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
4042 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
4043 ended up picking a
4044 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
4045 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
4046 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
4047 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
4048 on that below.</p>
4049
4050 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
4051 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
4052 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
4053 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
4054 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
4055 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
4056 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
4057 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
4058 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
4059
4060 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
4061 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
4062 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
4063 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
4064 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
4065 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
4066 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
4067
4068 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
4069 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
4070
4071 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
4072 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
4073 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
4074 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
4075 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
4076 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
4077 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
4078 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
4079 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
4080 kernel developers as
4081 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
4082 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
4083 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
4084 Lenovo forums, both for
4085 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
4086 2012-11-10</a> and for
4087 <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
4088 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
4089 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
4090 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
4091 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
4092 There is even a
4093 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
4094 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
4095 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
4096
4097 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
4098 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
4099 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
4100 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
4101 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
4102 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
4103 fixed. :)</p>
4104
4105       </div>
4106       <div class="tags">
4107
4108
4109         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>.
4110
4111
4112       </div>
4113     </div>
4114     <div class="padding"></div>
4115
4116     <div class="entry">
4117       <div class="title">
4118         <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>
4119       </div>
4120       <div class="date">
4121          4th July 2013
4122       </div>
4123       <div class="body">
4124         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
4125 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
4126 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
4127 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
4128 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
4129 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
4130 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
4131 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
4132 with an expencive door stop.</p>
4133
4134 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
4135 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
4136 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
4137 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
4138 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
4139 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
4140 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
4141
4142 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
4143 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
4144 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
4145 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
4146 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
4147 new laptop now. :)</p>
4148
4149 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
4150
4151       </div>
4152       <div class="tags">
4153
4154
4155         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>.
4156
4157
4158       </div>
4159     </div>
4160     <div class="padding"></div>
4161
4162     <div class="entry">
4163       <div class="title">
4164         <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>
4165       </div>
4166       <div class="date">
4167         25th June 2013
4168       </div>
4169       <div class="body">
4170         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
4171 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
4172 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
4173 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
4174 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
4175 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
4176 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
4177 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
4178 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
4179 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
4180 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
4181
4182 <p><pre>
4183 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
4184 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
4185 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
4186 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
4187 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
4188 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
4189 firmware-ipw2x00
4190 firmware-ipw2x00
4191 Preconfiguring packages ...
4192 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
4193 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
4194 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
4195 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
4196 #
4197 </pre></p>
4198
4199 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
4200 printed instead:</p>
4201
4202 <p><pre>
4203 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
4204 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
4205 #
4206 </pre></p>
4207
4208 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
4209 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
4210
4211 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
4212 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
4213 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
4214 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
4215 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
4216 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
4217 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
4218 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
4219 machine.</p>
4220
4221 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
4222 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
4223 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
4224 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
4225 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
4226 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
4227
4228       </div>
4229       <div class="tags">
4230
4231
4232         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>.
4233
4234
4235       </div>
4236     </div>
4237     <div class="padding"></div>
4238
4239     <div class="entry">
4240       <div class="title">
4241         <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>
4242       </div>
4243       <div class="date">
4244         11th June 2013
4245       </div>
4246       <div class="body">
4247         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
4248 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
4249 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
4250 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
4251 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
4252 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
4253 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
4254 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
4255 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
4256 i915 driver used by the
4257 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4258 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
4259
4260 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
4261 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
4262 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
4263 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
4264 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
4265
4266 <pre>
4267 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
4268 update-initramfs -u -k all
4269 </pre>
4270
4271 <p>Since March 2012 there is
4272 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
4273 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
4274 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
4275 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
4276 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
4277 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
4278 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
4279 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
4280 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
4281 number.</p>
4282
4283 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
4284 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
4285
4286 <p><pre>
4287 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
4288     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
4289     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
4290  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
4291  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
4292     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
4293  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
4294     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
4295  Latency: 0
4296  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
4297  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
4298  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
4299  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
4300  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
4301  Capabilities: <access denied>
4302  Kernel driver in use: i915
4303 </pre></p>
4304
4305 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
4306
4307 <p><pre>
4308 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
4309        ...
4310         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
4311         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
4312        ...
4313 }
4314 </pre></p>
4315
4316 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
4317 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
4318 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
4319 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
4320 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
4321 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
4322 yet shown up in
4323 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
4324 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
4325 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
4326 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
4327 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
4328 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
4329
4330 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
4331 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
4332 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
4333 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
4334 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
4335 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
4336 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
4337 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
4338 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
4339 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
4340 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
4341 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
4342
4343 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
4344 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
4345 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
4346 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
4347 backlight.</p>
4348
4349       </div>
4350       <div class="tags">
4351
4352
4353         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>.
4354
4355
4356       </div>
4357     </div>
4358     <div class="padding"></div>
4359
4360     <div class="entry">
4361       <div class="title">
4362         <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>
4363       </div>
4364       <div class="date">
4365         27th May 2013
4366       </div>
4367       <div class="body">
4368         <p>Two days ago, I asked
4369 <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
4370 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
4371 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
4372 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
4373 and Windows 8.</p>
4374
4375 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
4376 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
4377 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
4378 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
4379 enough to tell.</p>
4380
4381 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
4382 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
4383 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
4384 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
4385 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
4386 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
4387 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
4388 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
4389 to follow.</p>
4390
4391 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
4392 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
4393 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
4394 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
4395 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
4396 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
4397 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
4398 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
4399
4400 <p>I've updated the
4401 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
4402 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
4403 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
4404 machine.</p>
4405
4406 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
4407 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
4408
4409       </div>
4410       <div class="tags">
4411
4412
4413         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>.
4414
4415
4416       </div>
4417     </div>
4418     <div class="padding"></div>
4419
4420     <div class="entry">
4421       <div class="title">
4422         <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>
4423       </div>
4424       <div class="date">
4425         25th May 2013
4426       </div>
4427       <div class="body">
4428         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
4429 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
4430 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
4431 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
4432 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
4433 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
4434
4435 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
4436 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
4437 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
4438 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
4439 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
4440 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
4441 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
4442 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
4443 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
4444 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
4445
4446 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
4447 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
4448 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
4449 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
4450 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
4451 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
4452
4453 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
4454 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
4455 on new Laptops?</p>
4456
4457       </div>
4458       <div class="tags">
4459
4460
4461         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>.
4462
4463
4464       </div>
4465     </div>
4466     <div class="padding"></div>
4467
4468     <div class="entry">
4469       <div class="title">
4470         <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>
4471       </div>
4472       <div class="date">
4473         17th May 2013
4474       </div>
4475       <div class="body">
4476         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
4477 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
4478 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
4479 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
4480 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
4481 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
4482 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
4483 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
4484 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
4485 donate some money</a>.
4486
4487 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
4488 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
4489 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
4490 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
4491 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
4492
4493 <p>The script,
4494 <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/>
4495 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
4496 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
4497 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
4498
4499 <ol>
4500
4501 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
4502 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
4503 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
4504     our configuration.</li>
4505 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
4506     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
4507     according to the profile specified in the config above,
4508     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
4509 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
4510     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
4511 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
4512
4513 </ol>
4514
4515 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
4516 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
4517 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
4518 the needed packages.</p>
4519
4520 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
4521 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
4522 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
4523 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
4524 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
4525 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
4526
4527 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
4528 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
4529 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
4530
4531 <p><pre>
4532 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
4533 DESKTOP="lxde"
4534 </pre></p>
4535
4536 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
4537 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
4538 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
4539 boot.</p>
4540
4541       </div>
4542       <div class="tags">
4543
4544
4545         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>.
4546
4547
4548       </div>
4549     </div>
4550     <div class="padding"></div>
4551
4552     <div class="entry">
4553       <div class="title">
4554         <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>
4555       </div>
4556       <div class="date">
4557         11th May 2013
4558       </div>
4559       <div class="body">
4560         <P>In January,
4561 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
4562 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
4563 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
4564 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
4565 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
4566 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
4567 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
4568 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
4569 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
4570 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
4571 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
4572 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
4573
4574 <p><table>
4575 <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>
4576 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
4577 <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>
4578 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
4579 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
4580 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
4581 <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>
4582 <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>
4583 <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>
4584 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
4585 </table></p>
4586
4587 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
4588 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
4589 available in experimental.</p>
4590
4591 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
4592 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
4593 for LEGO designers.</p>
4594
4595       </div>
4596       <div class="tags">
4597
4598
4599         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>.
4600
4601
4602       </div>
4603     </div>
4604     <div class="padding"></div>
4605
4606     <div class="entry">
4607       <div class="title">
4608         <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>
4609       </div>
4610       <div class="date">
4611          5th May 2013
4612       </div>
4613       <div class="body">
4614         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
4615 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
4616 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
4617 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
4618 soon.</p>
4619
4620 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
4621 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
4622 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
4623 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
4624 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
4625 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
4626 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
4627 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
4628 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
4629 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
4630 Edu.</a>
4631
4632 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
4633 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
4634 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
4635 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
4636 follow.<p>
4637
4638       </div>
4639       <div class="tags">
4640
4641
4642         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>.
4643
4644
4645       </div>
4646     </div>
4647     <div class="padding"></div>
4648
4649     <div class="entry">
4650       <div class="title">
4651         <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>
4652       </div>
4653       <div class="date">
4654          3rd April 2013
4655       </div>
4656       <div class="body">
4657         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
4658 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
4659 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
4660 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
4661
4662 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
4663 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
4664 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
4665 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
4666 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
4667 BTS. :)</p>
4668
4669       </div>
4670       <div class="tags">
4671
4672
4673         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>.
4674
4675
4676       </div>
4677     </div>
4678     <div class="padding"></div>
4679
4680     <div class="entry">
4681       <div class="title">
4682         <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>
4683       </div>
4684       <div class="date">
4685          2nd February 2013
4686       </div>
4687       <div class="body">
4688         <p>My
4689 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
4690 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
4691 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
4692 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
4693 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
4694 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
4695 version too.</p>
4696
4697 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
4698 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
4699 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
4700 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
4701 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
4702 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
4703 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
4704 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
4705
4706 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
4707 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
4708 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
4709 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
4710 it. :)</p>
4711
4712 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4713 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4714 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4715
4716       </div>
4717       <div class="tags">
4718
4719
4720         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>.
4721
4722
4723       </div>
4724     </div>
4725     <div class="padding"></div>
4726
4727     <div class="entry">
4728       <div class="title">
4729         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
4730       </div>
4731       <div class="date">
4732         22nd January 2013
4733       </div>
4734       <div class="body">
4735         <p>Yesterday, I
4736 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
4737 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
4738 pluggable hardware devices, which I
4739 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
4740 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
4741 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
4742 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
4743 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
4744 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
4745 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
4746 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
4747 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
4748 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
4749
4750 <pre>
4751 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
4752 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
4753 </pre>
4754
4755 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
4756 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
4757 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
4758 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
4759
4760 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
4761 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
4762 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
4763 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
4764 word.</p>
4765
4766 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
4767 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
4768 process.</p>
4769
4770 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
4771 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
4772
4773       </div>
4774       <div class="tags">
4775
4776
4777         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>.
4778
4779
4780       </div>
4781     </div>
4782     <div class="padding"></div>
4783
4784     <div class="entry">
4785       <div class="title">
4786         <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>
4787       </div>
4788       <div class="date">
4789         21st January 2013
4790       </div>
4791       <div class="body">
4792         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
4793 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
4794 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
4795 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
4796 it, fetch the
4797 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
4798 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
4799 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
4800 autostart script.</p>
4801
4802 <p>The design is simple:</p>
4803
4804 <ul>
4805
4806 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
4807 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
4808
4809 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
4810 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
4811 initially did.</li>
4812
4813 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
4814 the APT database, a database
4815 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
4816 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
4817
4818 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
4819 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
4820 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
4821 package or packages.</li>
4822
4823 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
4824 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
4825
4826 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
4827 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
4828
4829 </ul>
4830
4831 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
4832 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
4833 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
4834 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
4835
4836 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
4837 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
4838 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
4839 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
4840 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
4841
4842 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
4843 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
4844 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
4845 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
4846 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
4847 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
4848 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
4849 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
4850
4851 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
4852 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
4853 '<tt>svn checkout
4854 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
4855 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
4856 devscripts package.</p>
4857
4858 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
4859 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
4860 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
4861 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
4862 instructions</a> for details.</p>
4863
4864       </div>
4865       <div class="tags">
4866
4867
4868         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>.
4869
4870
4871       </div>
4872     </div>
4873     <div class="padding"></div>
4874
4875     <div class="entry">
4876       <div class="title">
4877         <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>
4878       </div>
4879       <div class="date">
4880         19th January 2013
4881       </div>
4882       <div class="body">
4883         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
4884 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
4885 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
4886 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
4887 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
4888 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
4889 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
4890 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
4891 not a durable solution.
4892
4893 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
4894 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
4895
4896 <ul>
4897
4898 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
4899   than A4).</li>
4900 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
4901 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
4902 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
4903 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
4904 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
4905 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
4906 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
4907 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
4908 size).</li>
4909 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
4910   X.org packages.</li>
4911 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
4912   the time).
4913
4914 </ul>
4915
4916 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
4917 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
4918 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
4919 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
4920 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
4921 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
4922 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
4923 still be useful.</p>
4924
4925 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
4926 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
4927 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
4928 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
4929 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
4930 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
4931
4932       </div>
4933       <div class="tags">
4934
4935
4936         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>.
4937
4938
4939       </div>
4940     </div>
4941     <div class="padding"></div>
4942
4943     <div class="entry">
4944       <div class="title">
4945         <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>
4946       </div>
4947       <div class="date">
4948         18th January 2013
4949       </div>
4950       <div class="body">
4951         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
4952 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
4953 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
4954 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
4955 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
4956 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
4957 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
4958
4959 <pre>
4960 #!/usr/bin/python
4961 import sys
4962 import apt
4963 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4964     cache = apt.Cache()
4965     cache.open(None)
4966     thepkgs = []
4967     for pkg in cache:
4968         version = pkg.candidate
4969         if version is None:
4970             version = pkg.installed
4971         if version is None:
4972             continue
4973         record = version.record
4974         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
4975             continue
4976         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
4977         for t in mime_types:
4978             t = t.rstrip().strip()
4979             if t == mimetype:
4980                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
4981     return thepkgs
4982 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
4983 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
4984     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
4985 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
4986 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4987     print "  %s" %pkg
4988 </pre>
4989
4990 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
4991
4992 <pre>
4993 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
4994 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
4995   gecko-mediaplayer
4996 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
4997 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
4998   browser-plugin-gnash
4999 %
5000 </pre>
5001
5002 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
5003 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
5004 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
5005 anyone working on adding it?</p>
5006
5007 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
5008 request for icweasel support for this feature is
5009 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
5010 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
5011 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
5012 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</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>.
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/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
5028       </div>
5029       <div class="date">
5030         16th January 2013
5031       </div>
5032       <div class="body">
5033         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
5034 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
5035 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
5036 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
5037 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
5038 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
5039 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
5040 downloaded by the browser.</p>
5041
5042 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
5043 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
5044 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
5045 can be found on the
5046 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
5047 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
5048 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
5049 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
5050 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
5051
5052 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
5053
5054 <pre>
5055   count MIME type
5056   ----- -----------------------
5057      32 text/plain
5058      30 audio/mpeg
5059      29 image/png
5060      28 image/jpeg
5061      27 application/ogg
5062      26 audio/x-mp3
5063      25 image/tiff
5064      25 image/gif
5065      22 image/bmp
5066      22 audio/x-wav
5067      20 audio/x-flac
5068      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5069      18 video/x-ms-asf
5070      18 audio/x-musepack
5071      18 audio/x-mpeg
5072      18 application/x-ogg
5073      17 video/mpeg
5074      17 audio/x-scpls
5075      17 audio/ogg
5076      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5077 </pre>
5078
5079 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
5080
5081 <pre>
5082   count MIME type
5083   ----- -----------------------
5084      33 text/plain
5085      32 image/png
5086      32 image/jpeg
5087      29 audio/mpeg
5088      27 image/gif
5089      26 image/tiff
5090      26 application/ogg
5091      25 audio/x-mp3
5092      22 image/bmp
5093      21 audio/x-wav
5094      19 audio/x-mpegurl
5095      19 audio/x-mpeg
5096      18 video/mpeg
5097      18 audio/x-scpls
5098      18 audio/x-flac
5099      18 application/x-ogg
5100      17 video/x-ms-asf
5101      17 text/html
5102      17 audio/x-musepack
5103      16 image/x-xbitmap
5104 </pre>
5105
5106 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
5107
5108 <pre>
5109   count MIME type
5110   ----- -----------------------
5111      31 text/plain
5112      31 image/png
5113      31 image/jpeg
5114      29 audio/mpeg
5115      28 application/ogg
5116      27 image/gif
5117      26 image/tiff
5118      26 audio/x-mp3
5119      23 audio/x-wav
5120      22 image/bmp
5121      21 audio/x-flac
5122      20 audio/x-mpegurl
5123      19 audio/x-mpeg
5124      18 video/x-ms-asf
5125      18 video/mpeg
5126      18 audio/x-scpls
5127      18 application/x-ogg
5128      17 audio/x-musepack
5129      16 video/x-ms-wmv
5130      16 video/x-msvideo
5131 </pre>
5132
5133 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
5134 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
5135 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
5136 issues.</p>
5137
5138 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
5139 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
5140
5141       </div>
5142       <div class="tags">
5143
5144
5145         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>.
5146
5147
5148       </div>
5149     </div>
5150     <div class="padding"></div>
5151
5152     <div class="entry">
5153       <div class="title">
5154         <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>
5155       </div>
5156       <div class="date">
5157         15th January 2013
5158       </div>
5159       <div class="body">
5160         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
5161 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
5162 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
5163 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
5164 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
5165 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
5166 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
5167 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
5168 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
5169 packages.</p>
5170
5171 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
5172 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
5173 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
5174 modalias.</p>
5175
5176 <p><blockquote>
5177 Package: package-name
5178 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
5179 </blockquote></p>
5180
5181 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
5182 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
5183
5184 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
5185 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
5186
5187 <p><blockquote>
5188 Package: cheese
5189 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
5190 </blockquote></p>
5191
5192 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
5193 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
5194
5195 <p><blockquote>
5196 Package: pcmciautils
5197 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
5198 </blockquote></p>
5199
5200 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
5201 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
5202
5203 <p><blockquote>
5204 Package: colorhug-client
5205 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
5206 </blockquote></p>
5207
5208 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
5209 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
5210 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
5211
5212 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
5213 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
5214 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
5215 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
5216 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
5217 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
5218 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
5219 Raring.</p>
5220
5221 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
5222 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
5223 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
5224 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
5225 try the
5226 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
5227 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
5228 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
5229 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
5230
5231 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
5232 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
5233
5234 <p><blockquote>
5235 % ./hw-support-lookup
5236 <br>yubikey-personalization
5237 <br>%
5238 </blockquote></p>
5239
5240 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
5241 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
5242
5243 <p><blockquote>
5244 % ./hw-support-lookup
5245 <br>pcmciautils
5246 <br>%
5247 </blockquote></p>
5248
5249 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
5250 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
5251 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
5252
5253 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
5254 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
5255 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
5256 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
5257 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
5258 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
5259 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
5260 see if it work.</p>
5261
5262 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5263 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5264 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5265 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5266
5267       </div>
5268       <div class="tags">
5269
5270
5271         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>.
5272
5273
5274       </div>
5275     </div>
5276     <div class="padding"></div>
5277
5278     <div class="entry">
5279       <div class="title">
5280         <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>
5281       </div>
5282       <div class="date">
5283         14th January 2013
5284       </div>
5285       <div class="body">
5286         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
5287 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
5288 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
5289 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
5290 in
5291 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5292 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
5293
5294 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
5295
5296 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
5297 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
5298 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
5299 &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;,
5300 &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
5301 &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;.
5302
5303 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
5304 this shell script:</p>
5305
5306 <pre>
5307 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
5308 </pre>
5309
5310 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
5311 using modinfo:</p>
5312
5313 <pre>
5314 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
5315 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
5316 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
5317 %
5318 </pre>
5319
5320 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
5321
5322 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
5323 Bridge memory controller:</p>
5324
5325 <p><blockquote>
5326 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
5327 </blockquote></p>
5328
5329 <p>This represent these values:</p>
5330
5331 <pre>
5332  v   00008086  (vendor)
5333  d   00002770  (device)
5334  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
5335  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
5336  bc  06        (bus class)
5337  sc  00        (bus subclass)
5338  i   00        (interface)
5339 </pre>
5340
5341 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
5342 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
5343 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
5344 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
5345
5346 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
5347 means.</p>
5348
5349 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
5350
5351 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
5352 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
5353
5354 <p><blockquote>
5355 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
5356 </blockquote></p>
5357
5358 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
5359
5360 <pre>
5361  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
5362  p    0001  (device product)
5363  d    0206  (bcddevice)
5364  dc     09  (device class)
5365  dsc    00  (device subclass)
5366  dp     00  (device protocol)
5367  ic     09  (interface class)
5368  isc    00  (interface subclass)
5369  ip     00  (interface protocol)
5370 </pre>
5371
5372 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
5373 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
5374 these alias entries show up:</p>
5375
5376 <p><blockquote>
5377 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
5378 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
5379 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
5380 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
5381 </blockquote></p>
5382
5383 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
5384 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
5385 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
5386
5387 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
5388
5389 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
5390 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
5391
5392 <p><blockquote>
5393 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5394 </blockquote></p>
5395
5396 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
5397
5398 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
5399
5400 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
5401 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
5402 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
5403
5404 <p><blockquote>
5405 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
5406 </blockquote></p>
5407
5408 <p>The values present are</p>
5409
5410 <pre>
5411  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
5412  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
5413  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
5414  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
5415  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
5416  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
5417  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
5418  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
5419  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
5420  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
5421  ct   10             (chassis type)
5422  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
5423 </pre>
5424
5425 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
5426 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
5427
5428 <pre>
5429   3 Desktop
5430   4 Low Profile Desktop
5431   5 Pizza Box
5432   6 Mini Tower
5433   7 Tower
5434   8 Portable
5435   9 Laptop
5436  10 Notebook
5437  11 Hand Held
5438  12 Docking Station
5439  13 All In One
5440  14 Sub Notebook
5441  15 Space-saving
5442  16 Lunch Box
5443  17 Main Server Chassis
5444  18 Expansion Chassis
5445  19 Sub Chassis
5446  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
5447  21 Peripheral Chassis
5448  22 RAID Chassis
5449  23 Rack Mount Chassis
5450  24 Sealed-case PC
5451  25 Multi-system
5452  26 CompactPCI
5453  27 AdvancedTCA
5454  28 Blade
5455  29 Blade Enclosing
5456 </pre>
5457
5458 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
5459 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
5460 claim it is a desktop.</p>
5461
5462 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
5463
5464 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
5465 test machine:</p>
5466
5467 <p><blockquote>
5468 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
5469 </blockquote></p>
5470
5471 <p>The values present are</p>
5472
5473 <pre>
5474   ty  01  (type)
5475   pr  00  (prototype)
5476   id  00  (id)
5477   ex  00  (extra)
5478 </pre>
5479
5480 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
5481 the valid values are.</p>
5482
5483 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
5484
5485 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
5486 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
5487 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
5488 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
5489 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
5490 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
5491 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
5492
5493 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
5494
5495 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
5496 one can use the following shell script:</p>
5497
5498 <pre>
5499   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
5500     echo "$id" ; \
5501     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
5502   done
5503 </pre>
5504
5505 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
5506 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
5507
5508 <pre>
5509   acpi:ACPI0003:
5510     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
5511   acpi:device:
5512   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
5513   acpi:IBM0068:
5514     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
5515     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
5516     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
5517     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
5518   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
5519     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
5520     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
5521     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
5522   [...]
5523 </pre>
5524
5525 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
5526 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
5527 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
5528 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
5529
5530 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
5531 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
5532 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
5533
5534       </div>
5535       <div class="tags">
5536
5537
5538         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>.
5539
5540
5541       </div>
5542     </div>
5543     <div class="padding"></div>
5544
5545     <div class="entry">
5546       <div class="title">
5547         <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>
5548       </div>
5549       <div class="date">
5550         10th January 2013
5551       </div>
5552       <div class="body">
5553         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
5554 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
5555 Launcher and updated the Debian package
5556 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
5557 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
5558 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
5559 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
5560 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
5561 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
5562 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
5563 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
5564 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
5565 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
5566 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
5567 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
5568 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
5569 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
5570 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
5571
5572       </div>
5573       <div class="tags">
5574
5575
5576         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>.
5577
5578
5579       </div>
5580     </div>
5581     <div class="padding"></div>
5582
5583     <div class="entry">
5584       <div class="title">
5585         <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>
5586       </div>
5587       <div class="date">
5588          9th January 2013
5589       </div>
5590       <div class="body">
5591         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
5592 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
5593 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
5594 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
5595 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
5596 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
5597 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
5598 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
5599 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
5600 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
5601 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
5602
5603 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
5604 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
5605 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
5606 simple:
5607
5608 <ul>
5609
5610 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
5611   starting when a user log in.</li>
5612
5613 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
5614   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
5615
5616 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
5617   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
5618   packages.</li>
5619
5620 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
5621   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
5622
5623 </ul>
5624
5625 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
5626 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
5627 discover database to find packages and
5628 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
5629 packages.</p>
5630
5631 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
5632 draft package is now checked into
5633 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5634 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
5635 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
5636 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
5637 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
5638 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
5639 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
5640 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
5641 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
5642 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
5643 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
5644 because of the freeze).</p>
5645
5646 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
5647 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
5648 inserted):</p>
5649
5650 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
5651
5652 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
5653 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
5654 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
5655
5656 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
5657 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
5658 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
5659 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
5660 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
5661 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
5662 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
5663
5664 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
5665 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
5666 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
5667 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
5668 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
5669 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
5670 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
5671 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
5672 not be installed?</p>
5673
5674 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
5675 please send me an email. :)</p>
5676
5677       </div>
5678       <div class="tags">
5679
5680
5681         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
5682
5683
5684       </div>
5685     </div>
5686     <div class="padding"></div>
5687
5688     <div class="entry">
5689       <div class="title">
5690         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">New IRC channel for LEGO designers using Debian</a>
5691       </div>
5692       <div class="date">
5693          2nd January 2013
5694       </div>
5695       <div class="body">
5696         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
5697 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
5698 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
5699 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
5700 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
5701 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
5702 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
5703 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
5704 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
5705 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
5706
5707 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
5708 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
5709 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
5710
5711       </div>
5712       <div class="tags">
5713
5714
5715         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>.
5716
5717
5718       </div>
5719     </div>
5720     <div class="padding"></div>
5721
5722     <div class="entry">
5723       <div class="title">
5724         <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>
5725       </div>
5726       <div class="date">
5727         25th December 2012
5728       </div>
5729       <div class="body">
5730         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
5731 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
5732
5733 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
5734 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
5735 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
5736 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
5737 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
5738 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
5739 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
5740 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
5741 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
5742 name.</p>
5743
5744 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
5745 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
5746 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
5747
5748 <blockquote><pre>
5749 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
5750 cd bitcoin
5751 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
5752 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
5753 </pre></blockquote>
5754
5755 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
5756 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
5757 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
5758 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
5759 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
5760 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
5761 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
5762 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
5763 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
5764
5765 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5766 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5767 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5768
5769       </div>
5770       <div class="tags">
5771
5772
5773         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>.
5774
5775
5776       </div>
5777     </div>
5778     <div class="padding"></div>
5779
5780     <div class="entry">
5781       <div class="title">
5782         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
5783       </div>
5784       <div class="date">
5785         21st December 2012
5786       </div>
5787       <div class="body">
5788         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
5789 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
5790 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
5791 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
5792 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
5793 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
5794 is now maintained by a
5795 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
5796 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
5797 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
5798 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
5799 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
5800 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
5801 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
5802 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
5803 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
5804 Corallo in a
5805 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
5806 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
5807 Debian package.</p>
5808
5809 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
5810 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
5811 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
5812 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
5813 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
5814 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
5815 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
5816 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
5817 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
5818 new version to unstable.
5819
5820 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
5821 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
5822 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
5823 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
5824 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
5825 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
5826 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
5827 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
5828 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
5829 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
5830 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
5831 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
5832 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
5833 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
5834 have not tested them.</p>
5835
5836 <p>My
5837 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
5838 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
5839 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
5840 years ago, as can be
5841 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
5842 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
5843 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
5844 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
5845 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
5846 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
5847 the same address as last time,
5848 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5849
5850       </div>
5851       <div class="tags">
5852
5853
5854         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>.
5855
5856
5857       </div>
5858     </div>
5859     <div class="padding"></div>
5860
5861     <div class="entry">
5862       <div class="title">
5863         <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>
5864       </div>
5865       <div class="date">
5866          7th September 2012
5867       </div>
5868       <div class="body">
5869         <p>As I
5870 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
5871 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
5872 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
5873 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
5874 repository for the project</a>.</p>
5875
5876 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
5877 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
5878 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
5879 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
5880
5881 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
5882 PostScript formats at
5883 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
5884 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
5885
5886       </div>
5887       <div class="tags">
5888
5889
5890         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>.
5891
5892
5893       </div>
5894     </div>
5895     <div class="padding"></div>
5896
5897     <div class="entry">
5898       <div class="title">
5899         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
5900       </div>
5901       <div class="date">
5902         16th August 2012
5903       </div>
5904       <div class="body">
5905         <p>I dag fyller
5906 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
5907 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
5908 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
5909
5910       </div>
5911       <div class="tags">
5912
5913
5914         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
5915
5916
5917       </div>
5918     </div>
5919     <div class="padding"></div>
5920
5921     <div class="entry">
5922       <div class="title">
5923         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
5924       </div>
5925       <div class="date">
5926         24th June 2012
5927       </div>
5928       <div class="body">
5929         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
5930 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
5931 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
5932 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
5933 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
5934 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
5935 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
5936 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
5937 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
5938 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
5939 missing in my book.</p>
5940
5941 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
5942 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
5943 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
5944 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
5945 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
5946 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
5947 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
5948
5949       </div>
5950       <div class="tags">
5951
5952
5953         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>.
5954
5955
5956       </div>
5957     </div>
5958     <div class="padding"></div>
5959
5960     <div class="entry">
5961       <div class="title">
5962         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
5963       </div>
5964       <div class="date">
5965         21st November 2011
5966       </div>
5967       <div class="body">
5968         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
5969 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
5970 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
5971 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
5972 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
5973 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
5974 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
5975 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
5976 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
5977 the tools to do so.</p>
5978
5979 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
5980 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
5981 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
5982 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
5983
5984 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
5985 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
5986 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
5987 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
5988 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
5989 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
5990 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
5991 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
5992
5993 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
5994 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
5995 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
5996
5997 <p><pre>
5998 #!/usr/bin/perl
5999 use strict;
6000 use warnings;
6001 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
6002 BEGIN {
6003     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
6004     my %rhelmodules = (
6005         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
6006         );
6007     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
6008         eval "use $module;";
6009         if ($@) {
6010             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
6011             system("yum install -y $pkg");
6012             eval "use $module;";
6013         }
6014     }
6015 }
6016 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
6017
6018 upgrade_dell();
6019
6020 exit 0;
6021
6022 sub run_firmware_script {
6023     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
6024     unless ($script) {
6025         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
6026         exit 1
6027     }
6028     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
6029
6030     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
6031         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
6032     } else {
6033         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
6034     }
6035 }
6036
6037 sub run_firmware_scripts {
6038     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
6039     # Run firmware packages
6040     for my $dir (@dirs) {
6041         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
6042         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
6043         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
6044             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
6045             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
6046         }
6047         closedir $dh;
6048     }
6049 }
6050
6051 sub download {
6052     my $url = shift;
6053     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
6054     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
6055 }
6056
6057 sub upgrade_dell {
6058     my @dirs;
6059     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6060     chomp $product;
6061
6062     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
6063
6064         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
6065         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
6066
6067         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
6068             CLEANUP => 1
6069             );
6070         chdir($tmpdir);
6071         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
6072         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
6073         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
6074         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
6075         my $fwopts = "-q";
6076         if (@paths) {
6077             for my $url (@paths) {
6078                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
6079             }
6080             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
6081         } else {
6082             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
6083             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
6084         }
6085         chdir('/');
6086     } else {
6087         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
6088         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
6089     }
6090 }
6091
6092 sub fetch_dell_fw {
6093     my $path = shift;
6094     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
6095     download($url);
6096 }
6097
6098 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
6099 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
6100 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
6101 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
6102     my $filename = shift;
6103
6104     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
6105     chomp $product;
6106     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
6107
6108     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
6109
6110     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
6111     my @paths;
6112     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
6113         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
6114         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
6115         my $oscode;
6116         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
6117             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
6118         } else {
6119             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
6120         }
6121         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
6122         {
6123             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
6124         }
6125     }
6126     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
6127         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
6128
6129         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
6130         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
6131
6132         my $cpath = $component->{path};
6133         for my $path (@paths) {
6134             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
6135                 push(@paths, $cpath);
6136             }
6137         }
6138     }
6139     return @paths;
6140 }
6141 </pre>
6142
6143 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
6144 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
6145 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
6146 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
6147 outdated.</p>
6148
6149       </div>
6150       <div class="tags">
6151
6152
6153         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>.
6154
6155
6156       </div>
6157     </div>
6158     <div class="padding"></div>
6159
6160     <div class="entry">
6161       <div class="title">
6162         <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>
6163       </div>
6164       <div class="date">
6165          4th August 2011
6166       </div>
6167       <div class="body">
6168         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
6169 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
6170 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
6171 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
6172 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
6173 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
6174 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
6175 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
6176 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
6177
6178 <p><blockquote>
6179 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
6180 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
6181 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
6182 </blockquote></p>
6183
6184 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
6185 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
6186 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
6187 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
6188 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
6189 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
6190 hard to explain.</p>
6191
6192 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
6193 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
6194 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
6195 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
6196 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
6197 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
6198 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
6199 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
6200 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
6201 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
6202 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
6203 mode).</p>
6204
6205 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
6206 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
6207 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
6208 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
6209 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
6210 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
6211 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
6212 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
6213 after visiting single user mode.</p>
6214
6215 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
6216 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
6217 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
6218 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
6219 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
6220 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
6221 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
6222 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
6223
6224 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
6225 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
6226 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
6227
6228       </div>
6229       <div class="tags">
6230
6231
6232         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>.
6233
6234
6235       </div>
6236     </div>
6237     <div class="padding"></div>
6238
6239     <div class="entry">
6240       <div class="title">
6241         <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>
6242       </div>
6243       <div class="date">
6244         30th July 2011
6245       </div>
6246       <div class="body">
6247         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
6248 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
6249 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
6250 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
6251 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
6252 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
6253 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
6254 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
6255 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
6256 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
6257 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
6258 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
6259 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
6260
6261 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
6262 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
6263 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
6264 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
6265 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
6266 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
6267 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
6268 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
6269 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
6270
6271 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
6272 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
6273 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
6274 is presented.</p>
6275
6276 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
6277 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
6278 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
6279 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
6280 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
6281 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
6282 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
6283 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
6284 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
6285 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
6286 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
6287 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
6288 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
6289 find time to push this forward.</p>
6290
6291       </div>
6292       <div class="tags">
6293
6294
6295         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>.
6296
6297
6298       </div>
6299     </div>
6300     <div class="padding"></div>
6301
6302     <div class="entry">
6303       <div class="title">
6304         <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>
6305       </div>
6306       <div class="date">
6307         29th July 2011
6308       </div>
6309       <div class="body">
6310         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
6311 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
6312 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
6313 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
6314 issues.</p>
6315
6316 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
6317 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
6318 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
6319
6320 <ol>
6321
6322 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
6323 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
6324 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
6325 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
6326 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
6327 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
6328 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
6329 Debian.</li>
6330
6331 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
6332 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
6333 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
6334 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
6335 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
6336 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
6337 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
6338 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
6339 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
6340 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
6341 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
6342 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
6343 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
6344
6345 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
6346 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
6347 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
6348 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
6349 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
6350 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
6351 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
6352 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
6353 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
6354 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
6355
6356 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
6357 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
6358 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
6359 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
6360 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
6361 latter behaviour.</li>
6362
6363 </ol>
6364
6365 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
6366 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
6367 it do not matter much.</p>
6368
6369 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
6370 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
6371 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
6372
6373       </div>
6374       <div class="tags">
6375
6376
6377         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>.
6378
6379
6380       </div>
6381     </div>
6382     <div class="padding"></div>
6383
6384     <div class="entry">
6385       <div class="title">
6386         <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>
6387       </div>
6388       <div class="date">
6389         26th July 2011
6390       </div>
6391       <div class="body">
6392         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
6393 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
6394 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
6395 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
6396 security support for a few years.</p>
6397
6398 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
6399 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
6400 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
6401 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
6402 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
6403 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
6404 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
6405 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
6406 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
6407 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
6408 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
6409 easier in the future.</p>
6410
6411 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
6412 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
6413 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
6414 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
6415 do not have time for.</p>
6416
6417       </div>
6418       <div class="tags">
6419
6420
6421         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>.
6422
6423
6424       </div>
6425     </div>
6426     <div class="padding"></div>
6427
6428     <div class="entry">
6429       <div class="title">
6430         <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>
6431       </div>
6432       <div class="date">
6433          3rd April 2011
6434       </div>
6435       <div class="body">
6436         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
6437 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
6438 update in English.</p>
6439
6440 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
6441 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
6442 of the British service
6443 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
6444 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
6445 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
6446 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
6447 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
6448 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
6449 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
6450 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
6451 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
6452 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
6453 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
6454 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
6455 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
6456
6457 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
6458 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
6459 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
6460 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
6461 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
6462 public infrastructure.</p>
6463
6464 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
6465 such service?</p>
6466
6467       </div>
6468       <div class="tags">
6469
6470
6471         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>.
6472
6473
6474       </div>
6475     </div>
6476     <div class="padding"></div>
6477
6478     <div class="entry">
6479       <div class="title">
6480         <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>
6481       </div>
6482       <div class="date">
6483         28th January 2011
6484       </div>
6485       <div class="body">
6486         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
6487 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
6488 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
6489 available on the Internet, and check our locally
6490 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
6491 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
6492 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
6493 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
6494 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
6495 out which security holes were present in our free software
6496 collection.</p>
6497
6498 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
6499 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
6500 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
6501 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
6502 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
6503 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
6504 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
6505 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
6506 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
6507 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
6508 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
6509 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
6510 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
6511 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
6512 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
6513 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
6514
6515 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
6516 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
6517 check out, one could look up
6518 <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
6519 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
6520 The most recent one is
6521 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
6522 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
6523 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
6524
6525 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
6526 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
6527 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
6528 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
6529 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
6530 security issues out.</p>
6531
6532 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
6533 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
6534 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
6535 RHEL is providing
6536 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
6537 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
6538 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
6539
6540 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
6541 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
6542 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
6543 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
6544 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
6545 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
6546 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
6547 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
6548 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
6549 established soon.</p>
6550
6551 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
6552 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
6553 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
6554 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
6555 for their packages.</p>
6556
6557       </div>
6558       <div class="tags">
6559
6560
6561         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>.
6562
6563
6564       </div>
6565     </div>
6566     <div class="padding"></div>
6567
6568     <div class="entry">
6569       <div class="title">
6570         <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>
6571       </div>
6572       <div class="date">
6573         23rd January 2011
6574       </div>
6575       <div class="body">
6576         <p>In the
6577 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
6578 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6579 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6580 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
6581 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6582 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6583 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
6584 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6585 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
6586 one of my machines like this:</p>
6587
6588 <pre>
6589 loaded modules:
6590 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6591 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
6592 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
6593 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6594 10de:03ec pata_amd
6595 10de:03f6 sata_nv
6596 1022:1103 k8temp
6597 109e:036e bttv
6598 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
6599 11ab:4364 sky2
6600 </pre>
6601
6602 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6603 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
6604
6605 <pre>
6606 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6607     echo loaded pci modules:
6608     (
6609         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6610         for address in * ; do
6611             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6612                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6613                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6614                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6615                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
6616                     echo "$id $module"
6617                 fi
6618             fi
6619         done
6620     )
6621     echo
6622 fi
6623 </pre>
6624
6625 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6626 mappings:</p>
6627
6628 <pre>
6629 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6630     echo loaded usb modules:
6631     (
6632         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6633         for address in * ; do
6634             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6635                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6636                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6637                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6638                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
6639                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
6640                         echo "$id $module"
6641                     fi
6642                 fi
6643             fi
6644         done
6645     )
6646     echo
6647 fi
6648 </pre>
6649
6650 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6651 well.</p>
6652
6653       </div>
6654       <div class="tags">
6655
6656
6657         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>.
6658
6659
6660       </div>
6661     </div>
6662     <div class="padding"></div>
6663
6664     <div class="entry">
6665       <div class="title">
6666         <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>
6667       </div>
6668       <div class="date">
6669         22nd December 2010
6670       </div>
6671       <div class="body">
6672         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
6673 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
6674 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
6675 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
6676 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
6677 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
6678 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
6679 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
6680 university.</p>
6681
6682 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
6683 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
6684 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
6685 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
6686 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
6687 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
6688 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
6689 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
6690
6691 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
6692 I perform on a new model.</p>
6693
6694 <ul>
6695
6696 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
6697 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
6698 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
6699
6700 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
6701 installation, X.org is working.</li>
6702
6703 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
6704 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
6705 reported by the program.</li>
6706
6707 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
6708 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
6709 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
6710 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
6711 normally test this by playing
6712 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
6713 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
6714
6715 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
6716 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6717
6718 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
6719 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
6720
6721 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
6722 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
6723
6724 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
6725 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
6726 few.</li>
6727
6728 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
6729 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
6730 notice this.</li>
6731
6732 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
6733 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
6734 resume.</li>
6735
6736 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
6737 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
6738 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
6739 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
6740 not.</li>
6741
6742 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
6743 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
6744 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
6745 existence.</li>
6746
6747 </ul>
6748
6749 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
6750 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
6751 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
6752 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
6753 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
6754 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
6755 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
6756 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
6757
6758       </div>
6759       <div class="tags">
6760
6761
6762         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>.
6763
6764
6765       </div>
6766     </div>
6767     <div class="padding"></div>
6768
6769     <div class="entry">
6770       <div class="title">
6771         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
6772       </div>
6773       <div class="date">
6774         11th December 2010
6775       </div>
6776       <div class="body">
6777         <p>As I continue to explore
6778 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
6779 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
6780 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
6781
6782 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
6783 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
6784 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
6785 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
6786 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
6787 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
6788 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
6789 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
6790 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
6791 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
6792 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
6793 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
6794 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
6795 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
6796 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
6797 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
6798 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
6799 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
6800 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
6801 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
6802
6803 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
6804 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
6805 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
6806 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
6807 If the Skolelinux foundation
6808 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
6809 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
6810 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
6811 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
6812 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
6813 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
6814 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
6815 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
6816
6817 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
6818 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
6819 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
6820 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
6821 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
6822 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
6823 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
6824 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
6825 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
6826 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
6827 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
6828 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
6829 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
6830 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
6831 currencies.</p>
6832
6833 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
6834 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
6835 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
6836 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
6837 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
6838 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
6839 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
6840 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
6841 BitCoins.  Check out
6842 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
6843 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
6844 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
6845 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
6846 yet.</p>
6847
6848 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
6849 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
6850 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
6851 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
6852 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
6853
6854       </div>
6855       <div class="tags">
6856
6857
6858         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>.
6859
6860
6861       </div>
6862     </div>
6863     <div class="padding"></div>
6864
6865     <div class="entry">
6866       <div class="title">
6867         <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>
6868       </div>
6869       <div class="date">
6870         10th December 2010
6871       </div>
6872       <div class="body">
6873         <p>With this weeks lawless
6874 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
6875 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
6876 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
6877 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
6878 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
6879 A blog post from
6880 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
6881 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
6882 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
6883 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
6884 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
6885 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
6886 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
6887
6888 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
6889 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
6890 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
6891 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
6892 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
6893 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
6894 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
6895 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
6896 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
6897 Debian</a> soon.</p>
6898
6899 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
6900 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
6901 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
6902 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
6903 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
6904 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
6905 you can even get
6906 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
6907 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
6908 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
6909 on the current exchange rates.</p>
6910
6911 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
6912 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
6913 donations to the address
6914 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
6915
6916       </div>
6917       <div class="tags">
6918
6919
6920         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>.
6921
6922
6923       </div>
6924     </div>
6925     <div class="padding"></div>
6926
6927     <div class="entry">
6928       <div class="title">
6929         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
6930       </div>
6931       <div class="date">
6932         27th November 2010
6933       </div>
6934       <div class="body">
6935         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
6936 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
6937 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
6938 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
6939 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
6940 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
6941 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
6942 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
6943
6944 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
6945 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
6946 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
6947 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
6948 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
6949 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
6950 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
6951 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
6952 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
6953 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
6954 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
6955
6956 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
6957 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
6958 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
6959 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
6960 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
6961 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
6962 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
6963 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
6964 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
6965 what is going on.</p>
6966
6967       </div>
6968       <div class="tags">
6969
6970
6971         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>.
6972
6973
6974       </div>
6975     </div>
6976     <div class="padding"></div>
6977
6978     <div class="entry">
6979       <div class="title">
6980         <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>
6981       </div>
6982       <div class="date">
6983         22nd November 2010
6984       </div>
6985       <div class="body">
6986         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
6987 upgrade testing of the
6988 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
6989 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
6990 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
6991 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
6992
6993 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
6994
6995 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
6996
6997 <blockquote><p>
6998   apache2.2-bin
6999   aptdaemon
7000   baobab
7001   binfmt-support
7002   browser-plugin-gnash
7003   cheese-common
7004   cli-common
7005   cups-pk-helper
7006   dmz-cursor-theme
7007   empathy
7008   empathy-common
7009   freedesktop-sound-theme
7010   freeglut3
7011   gconf-defaults-service
7012   gdm-themes
7013   gedit-plugins
7014   geoclue
7015   geoclue-hostip
7016   geoclue-localnet
7017   geoclue-manual
7018   geoclue-yahoo
7019   gnash
7020   gnash-common
7021   gnome
7022   gnome-backgrounds
7023   gnome-cards-data
7024   gnome-codec-install
7025   gnome-core
7026   gnome-desktop-environment
7027   gnome-disk-utility
7028   gnome-screenshot
7029   gnome-search-tool
7030   gnome-session-canberra
7031   gnome-system-log
7032   gnome-themes-extras
7033   gnome-themes-more
7034   gnome-user-share
7035   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7036   gstreamer0.10-tools
7037   gtk2-engines
7038   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
7039   gtk2-engines-smooth
7040   hamster-applet
7041   libapache2-mod-dnssd
7042   libapr1
7043   libaprutil1
7044   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
7045   libaprutil1-ldap
7046   libart2.0-cil
7047   libboost-date-time1.42.0
7048   libboost-python1.42.0
7049   libboost-thread1.42.0
7050   libchamplain-0.4-0
7051   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
7052   libcheese-gtk18
7053   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
7054   libcryptui0
7055   libdiscid0
7056   libelf1
7057   libepc-1.0-2
7058   libepc-common
7059   libepc-ui-1.0-2
7060   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7061   libfreerdp0
7062   libgconf2.0-cil
7063   libgdata-common
7064   libgdata7
7065   libgdu-gtk0
7066   libgee2
7067   libgeoclue0
7068   libgexiv2-0
7069   libgif4
7070   libglade2.0-cil
7071   libglib2.0-cil
7072   libgmime2.4-cil
7073   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
7074   libgnome2.24-cil
7075   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
7076   libgpod-common
7077   libgpod4
7078   libgtk2.0-cil
7079   libgtkglext1
7080   libgtksourceview2.0-common
7081   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7082   libmono-addins0.2-cil
7083   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
7084   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7085   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
7086   libmono-posix2.0-cil
7087   libmono-security2.0-cil
7088   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7089   libmono-system2.0-cil
7090   libmtp8
7091   libmusicbrainz3-6
7092   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
7093   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
7094   libopal3.6.8
7095   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
7096   libpt2.6.7
7097   libpython2.6
7098   librpm1
7099   librpmio1
7100   libsdl1.2debian
7101   libsrtp0
7102   libssh-4
7103   libtelepathy-farsight0
7104   libtelepathy-glib0
7105   libtidy-0.99-0
7106   media-player-info
7107   mesa-utils
7108   mono-2.0-gac
7109   mono-gac
7110   mono-runtime
7111   nautilus-sendto
7112   nautilus-sendto-empathy
7113   p7zip-full
7114   pkg-config
7115   python-aptdaemon
7116   python-aptdaemon-gtk
7117   python-axiom
7118   python-beautifulsoup
7119   python-bugbuddy
7120   python-clientform
7121   python-coherence
7122   python-configobj
7123   python-crypto
7124   python-cupshelpers
7125   python-elementtree
7126   python-epsilon
7127   python-evolution
7128   python-feedparser
7129   python-gdata
7130   python-gdbm
7131   python-gst0.10
7132   python-gtkglext1
7133   python-gtksourceview2
7134   python-httplib2
7135   python-louie
7136   python-mako
7137   python-markupsafe
7138   python-mechanize
7139   python-nevow
7140   python-notify
7141   python-opengl
7142   python-openssl
7143   python-pam
7144   python-pkg-resources
7145   python-pyasn1
7146   python-pysqlite2
7147   python-rdflib
7148   python-serial
7149   python-tagpy
7150   python-twisted-bin
7151   python-twisted-conch
7152   python-twisted-core
7153   python-twisted-web
7154   python-utidylib
7155   python-webkit
7156   python-xdg
7157   python-zope.interface
7158   remmina
7159   remmina-plugin-data
7160   remmina-plugin-rdp
7161   remmina-plugin-vnc
7162   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7163   rhythmbox-plugins
7164   rpm-common
7165   rpm2cpio
7166   seahorse-plugins
7167   shotwell
7168   software-center
7169   system-config-printer-udev
7170   telepathy-gabble
7171   telepathy-mission-control-5
7172   telepathy-salut
7173   tomboy
7174   totem
7175   totem-coherence
7176   totem-mozilla
7177   totem-plugins
7178   transmission-common
7179   xdg-user-dirs
7180   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
7181   xserver-xephyr
7182 </p></blockquote>
7183
7184 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7185
7186 <blockquote><p>
7187   cheese
7188   ekiga
7189   eog
7190   epiphany-extensions
7191   evolution-exchange
7192   fast-user-switch-applet
7193   file-roller
7194   gcalctool
7195   gconf-editor
7196   gdm
7197   gedit
7198   gedit-common
7199   gnome-games
7200   gnome-games-data
7201   gnome-nettool
7202   gnome-system-tools
7203   gnome-themes
7204   gnuchess
7205   gucharmap
7206   guile-1.8-libs
7207   libavahi-ui0
7208   libdmx1
7209   libgalago3
7210   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
7211   libgtksourceview2.0-0
7212   liblircclient0
7213   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
7214   libspeexdsp1
7215   libsvga1
7216   rhythmbox
7217   seahorse
7218   sound-juicer
7219   system-config-printer
7220   totem-common
7221   transmission-gtk
7222   vinagre
7223   vino
7224 </p></blockquote>
7225
7226 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7227
7228 <blockquote><p>
7229   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7230 </p></blockquote>
7231
7232 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7233
7234 <blockquote><p>
7235 [nothing]
7236 </p></blockquote>
7237
7238 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
7239
7240 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7241
7242 <blockquote><p>
7243   ksmserver
7244 </p></blockquote>
7245
7246 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7247
7248 <blockquote><p>
7249   kwin
7250   network-manager-kde
7251 </p></blockquote>
7252
7253 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7254
7255 <blockquote><p>
7256   arts
7257   dolphin
7258   freespacenotifier
7259   google-gadgets-gst
7260   google-gadgets-xul
7261   kappfinder
7262   kcalc
7263   kcharselect
7264   kde-core
7265   kde-plasma-desktop
7266   kde-standard
7267   kde-window-manager
7268   kdeartwork
7269   kdeartwork-emoticons
7270   kdeartwork-style
7271   kdeartwork-theme-icon
7272   kdebase
7273   kdebase-apps
7274   kdebase-workspace
7275   kdebase-workspace-bin
7276   kdebase-workspace-data
7277   kdeeject
7278   kdelibs
7279   kdeplasma-addons
7280   kdeutils
7281   kdewallpapers
7282   kdf
7283   kfloppy
7284   kgpg
7285   khelpcenter4
7286   kinfocenter
7287   konq-plugins-l10n
7288   konqueror-nsplugins
7289   kscreensaver
7290   kscreensaver-xsavers
7291   ktimer
7292   kwrite
7293   libgle3
7294   libkde4-ruby1.8
7295   libkonq5
7296   libkonq5-templates
7297   libnetpbm10
7298   libplasma-ruby
7299   libplasma-ruby1.8
7300   libqt4-ruby1.8
7301   marble-data
7302   marble-plugins
7303   netpbm
7304   nuvola-icon-theme
7305   plasma-dataengines-workspace
7306   plasma-desktop
7307   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
7308   plasma-runners-addons
7309   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
7310   plasma-scriptengine-python
7311   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
7312   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
7313   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
7314   plasma-scriptengines
7315   plasma-wallpapers-addons
7316   plasma-widget-folderview
7317   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7318   ruby
7319   sweeper
7320   update-notifier-kde
7321   xscreensaver-data-extra
7322   xscreensaver-gl
7323   xscreensaver-gl-extra
7324   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7325 </p></blockquote>
7326
7327 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7328
7329 <blockquote><p>
7330   ark
7331   google-gadgets-common
7332   google-gadgets-qt
7333   htdig
7334   kate
7335   kdebase-bin
7336   kdebase-data
7337   kdepasswd
7338   kfind
7339   klipper
7340   konq-plugins
7341   konqueror
7342   ksysguard
7343   ksysguardd
7344   libarchive1
7345   libcln6
7346   libeet1
7347   libeina-svn-06
7348   libggadget-1.0-0b
7349   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
7350   libgps19
7351   libkdecorations4
7352   libkephal4
7353   libkonq4
7354   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
7355   libkscreensaver5
7356   libksgrd4
7357   libksignalplotter4
7358   libkunitconversion4
7359   libkwineffects1a
7360   libmarblewidget4
7361   libntrack-qt4-1
7362   libntrack0
7363   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
7364   libplasmaclock4a
7365   libplasmagenericshell4
7366   libprocesscore4a
7367   libprocessui4a
7368   libqalculate5
7369   libqedje0a
7370   libqtruby4shared2
7371   libqzion0a
7372   libruby1.8
7373   libscim8c2a
7374   libsmokekdecore4-3
7375   libsmokekdeui4-3
7376   libsmokekfile3
7377   libsmokekhtml3
7378   libsmokekio3
7379   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
7380   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
7381   libsmokekparts3
7382   libsmokektexteditor3
7383   libsmokekutils3
7384   libsmokenepomuk3
7385   libsmokephonon3
7386   libsmokeplasma3
7387   libsmokeqtcore4-3
7388   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
7389   libsmokeqtgui4-3
7390   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
7391   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
7392   libsmokeqtscript4-3
7393   libsmokeqtsql4-3
7394   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
7395   libsmokeqttest4-3
7396   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
7397   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
7398   libsmokeqtxml4-3
7399   libsmokesolid3
7400   libsmokesoprano3
7401   libtaskmanager4a
7402   libtidy-0.99-0
7403   libweather-ion4a
7404   libxklavier16
7405   libxxf86misc1
7406   okteta
7407   oxygencursors
7408   plasma-dataengines-addons
7409   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
7410   plasma-widget-lancelot
7411   plasma-widgets-addons
7412   plasma-widgets-workspace
7413   polkit-kde-1
7414   ruby1.8
7415   systemsettings
7416   update-notifier-common
7417 </p></blockquote>
7418
7419 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
7420 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
7421 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
7422 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
7423
7424       </div>
7425       <div class="tags">
7426
7427
7428         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>.
7429
7430
7431       </div>
7432     </div>
7433     <div class="padding"></div>
7434
7435     <div class="entry">
7436       <div class="title">
7437         <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>
7438       </div>
7439       <div class="date">
7440         22nd November 2010
7441       </div>
7442       <div class="body">
7443         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
7444 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
7445 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
7446 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
7447 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
7448 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
7449 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
7450 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
7451 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
7452
7453 <p>I found
7454 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
7455 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
7456 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
7457 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
7458 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
7459 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
7460
7461 <pre>
7462 #!/bin/sh
7463
7464 # Based on
7465 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
7466
7467 set -e
7468 set -x
7469
7470 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
7471     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
7472     exit 1
7473 else
7474     host="$1"
7475 fi
7476
7477 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
7478     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
7479     exit 1
7480 fi
7481
7482 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
7483 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
7484 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
7485 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
7486
7487 img=$host.img
7488 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
7489 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
7490
7491 parted $img mklabel msdos
7492 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
7493 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
7494 parted $img set 1 boot on
7495
7496 modprobe dm-mod
7497 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
7498 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
7499
7500 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
7501 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
7502 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
7503
7504 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
7505 losetup -d /dev/loop0
7506 </pre>
7507
7508 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
7509 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
7510
7511 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
7512 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
7513 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
7514 seem to work just fine.</p>
7515
7516       </div>
7517       <div class="tags">
7518
7519
7520         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7521
7522
7523       </div>
7524     </div>
7525     <div class="padding"></div>
7526
7527     <div class="entry">
7528       <div class="title">
7529         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
7530       </div>
7531       <div class="date">
7532         20th November 2010
7533       </div>
7534       <div class="body">
7535         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
7536 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7537 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
7538 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
7539
7540 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
7541 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
7542 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
7543
7544 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
7545
7546 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7547
7548 <blockquote><p>
7549   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
7550   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
7551   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
7552   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
7553   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
7554   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
7555   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
7556   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
7557   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
7558   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
7559   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7560   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
7561   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
7562   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
7563   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
7564   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
7565   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
7566   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
7567   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7568   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
7569   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
7570   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
7571   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
7572   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
7573   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
7574   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7575   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7576   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
7577   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7578   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
7579   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
7580   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
7581   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
7582   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
7583   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
7584   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
7585   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
7586   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
7587   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
7588   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
7589   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
7590   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
7591   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
7592   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
7593   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
7594   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
7595   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
7596   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
7597   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
7598   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
7599   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
7600   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
7601   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7602   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
7603   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
7604   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
7605   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
7606   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
7607   zip
7608 </p></blockquote>
7609
7610 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
7611
7612 <blockquote><p>
7613   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
7614   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
7615   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
7616   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
7617   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
7618   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
7619   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
7620   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
7621   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
7622   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
7623   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
7624   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
7625   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
7626   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
7627   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
7628   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
7629   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7630   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
7631   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
7632   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
7633   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
7634   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
7635   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
7636   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
7637   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
7638   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
7639   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
7640   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
7641   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
7642 </p></blockquote>
7643
7644 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7645
7646 <blockquote><p>
7647   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7648 </p></blockquote>
7649
7650 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7651
7652 <blockquote><p>
7653 [nothing]
7654 </p></blockquote>
7655
7656 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
7657
7658 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7659
7660 <blockquote><p>
7661   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
7662   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
7663   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
7664   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
7665   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
7666   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
7667   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
7668   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
7669   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
7670   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
7671   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
7672   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
7673   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
7674   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
7675   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
7676   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
7677   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
7678   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
7679   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
7680   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
7681   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
7682   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
7683   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
7684   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
7685   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
7686   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
7687   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
7688   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
7689   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
7690   ttf-sazanami-gothic
7691 </p></blockquote>
7692
7693 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
7694
7695 <blockquote><p>
7696   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
7697   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
7698   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
7699   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
7700   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
7701   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
7702   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
7703   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
7704   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
7705   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
7706   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
7707   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
7708   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
7709   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
7710   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
7711   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
7712   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
7713   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
7714   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
7715   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
7716   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
7717   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
7718   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
7719   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
7720   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
7721   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
7722   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
7723   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
7724   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
7725   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
7726   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
7727   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
7728   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
7729 </p></blockquote>
7730
7731 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
7732
7733 <blockquote><p>
7734   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
7735   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
7736   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
7737   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
7738   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7739   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
7740   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7741 </p></blockquote>
7742
7743 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
7744
7745 <blockquote><p>
7746   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
7747 </p></blockquote>
7748
7749       </div>
7750       <div class="tags">
7751
7752
7753         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>.
7754
7755
7756       </div>
7757     </div>
7758     <div class="padding"></div>
7759
7760     <div class="entry">
7761       <div class="title">
7762         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
7763       </div>
7764       <div class="date">
7765         20th November 2010
7766       </div>
7767       <div class="body">
7768         <p>Answering
7769 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
7770 call from the Gnash project</a> for
7771 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
7772 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
7773 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
7774 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
7775 releases out more often.</p>
7776
7777 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
7778 I have considered setting up a <a
7779 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
7780 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
7781 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
7782 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
7783 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
7784 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
7785 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
7786 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
7787 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
7788 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
7789 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
7790 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
7791
7792       </div>
7793       <div class="tags">
7794
7795
7796         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>.
7797
7798
7799       </div>
7800     </div>
7801     <div class="padding"></div>
7802
7803     <div class="entry">
7804       <div class="title">
7805         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
7806       </div>
7807       <div class="date">
7808          9th November 2010
7809       </div>
7810       <div class="body">
7811         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
7812
7813 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
7814 3D linked in from
7815 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
7816 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
7817
7818       </div>
7819       <div class="tags">
7820
7821
7822         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>.
7823
7824
7825       </div>
7826     </div>
7827     <div class="padding"></div>
7828
7829     <div class="entry">
7830       <div class="title">
7831         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
7832       </div>
7833       <div class="date">
7834         24th October 2010
7835       </div>
7836       <div class="body">
7837         <p>Some updates.</p>
7838
7839 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
7840 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
7841 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
7842 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
7843 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
7844 :)</p>
7845
7846 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
7847 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
7848 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
7849 It is called
7850 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
7851 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
7852 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
7853 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
7854 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
7855 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
7856
7857 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
7858 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
7859 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
7860 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
7861 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
7862 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
7863 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
7864 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
7865 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
7866 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
7867
7868       </div>
7869       <div class="tags">
7870
7871
7872         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>.
7873
7874
7875       </div>
7876     </div>
7877     <div class="padding"></div>
7878
7879     <div class="entry">
7880       <div class="title">
7881         <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>
7882       </div>
7883       <div class="date">
7884          4th September 2010
7885       </div>
7886       <div class="body">
7887         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
7888 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
7889 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
7890 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
7891 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
7892 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
7893 installed.</p>
7894
7895 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
7896 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
7897 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
7898 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
7899 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7900 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
7901 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
7902 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
7903 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
7904
7905 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
7906 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
7907 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
7908 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
7909 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
7910 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
7911 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
7912 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
7913 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
7914 pages they want to visit.</p>
7915
7916 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
7917 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
7918 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
7919 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
7920 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
7921 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
7922 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
7923 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
7924 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
7925 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
7926 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
7927
7928       </div>
7929       <div class="tags">
7930
7931
7932         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>.
7933
7934
7935       </div>
7936     </div>
7937     <div class="padding"></div>
7938
7939     <div class="entry">
7940       <div class="title">
7941         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
7942       </div>
7943       <div class="date">
7944         27th July 2010
7945       </div>
7946       <div class="body">
7947         <p>I discovered this while doing
7948 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
7949 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
7950 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
7951 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
7952 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
7953
7954 <p>An example is from todays
7955 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
7956 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
7957 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
7958 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
7959 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
7960 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
7961 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
7962
7963 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
7964
7965 <blockquote><pre>
7966 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
7967  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
7968   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
7969 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
7970  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
7971 </pre></blockquote>
7972
7973 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
7974 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
7975 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
7976 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
7977 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
7978 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
7979 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
7980 of dependency loops.</p>
7981
7982 <p>Thanks to
7983 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
7984 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
7985 dependencies
7986 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
7987 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
7988
7989 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
7990 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
7991 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
7992 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
7993 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
7994 it.</p>
7995
7996       </div>
7997       <div class="tags">
7998
7999
8000         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>.
8001
8002
8003       </div>
8004     </div>
8005     <div class="padding"></div>
8006
8007     <div class="entry">
8008       <div class="title">
8009         <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>
8010       </div>
8011       <div class="date">
8012         17th July 2010
8013       </div>
8014       <div class="body">
8015         <p>This is a
8016 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
8017 on my
8018 <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
8019 work</a> on
8020 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
8021 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
8022
8023 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
8024 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
8025 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
8026 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
8027
8028 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
8029 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
8030 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
8031
8032 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
8033
8034 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
8035 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
8036 the web.
8037
8038 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
8039 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
8040 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
8041 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
8042 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
8043 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
8044
8045 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
8046 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
8047 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
8048 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
8049 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
8050 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
8051 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
8052 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
8053 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
8054 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
8055 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
8056 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
8057 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
8058 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
8059 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
8060 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
8061
8062 <blockquote><pre>
8063 ldapsearch -h ldap \
8064   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
8065   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8066   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8067   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8068   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8069   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8070
8071 ldapsearch -h ldap \
8072   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
8073   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
8074   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
8075   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
8076   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
8077 </pre></blockquote>
8078
8079 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
8080 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
8081 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
8082 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8083 also exist.</p>
8084
8085 <blockquote><pre>
8086 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8087 objectclass: top
8088 objectclass: dnsdomain
8089 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8090 dc: tjener
8091 arecord: 10.0.2.2
8092 associateddomain: tjener.intern
8093
8094 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8095 objectclass: top
8096 objectclass: dnsdomain2
8097 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8098 dc: 2
8099 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
8100 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
8101 </pre></blockquote>
8102
8103 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
8104 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
8105 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
8106 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
8107 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
8108 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
8109 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
8110 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
8111 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
8112 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
8113 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
8114 instead.</p>
8115
8116 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
8117 like this:</p>
8118
8119 <blockquote><pre>
8120 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8121   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
8122   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
8123   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
8124   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
8125   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
8126
8127 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
8128   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
8129 </pre></blockquote>
8130
8131 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
8132 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
8133 reverse lookups.</p>
8134
8135 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
8136 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
8137 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
8138 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
8139
8140 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
8141 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
8142 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
8143
8144 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
8145 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
8146 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
8147 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
8148 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
8149
8150 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
8151 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
8152 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
8153 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
8154 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
8155
8156 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
8157 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
8158 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
8159 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
8160 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
8161 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
8162
8163 <blockquote><pre>
8164 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
8165     SUP top
8166     AUXILIARY
8167     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
8168           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
8169           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
8170           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
8171           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
8172     ))
8173 </pre></blockquote>
8174
8175 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
8176 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
8177 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
8178 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
8179 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
8180 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
8181
8182 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
8183
8184 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
8185 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
8186 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
8187 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
8188 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
8189
8190 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
8191 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
8192 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
8193 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
8194
8195 <blockquote><pre>
8196 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
8197 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
8198 </pre></blockquote>
8199
8200 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
8201 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
8202 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
8203 search result is this entry:</p>
8204
8205 <blockquote><pre>
8206 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8207 cn: dhcp
8208 objectClass: top
8209 objectClass: dhcpServer
8210 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8211 </pre></blockquote>
8212
8213 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
8214 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
8215 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
8216 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
8217 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
8218 The search result is this entry:</p>
8219
8220 <blockquote><pre>
8221 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8222 cn: DHCP Config
8223 objectClass: top
8224 objectClass: dhcpService
8225 objectClass: dhcpOptions
8226 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8227 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
8228 dhcpStatements: authoritative
8229 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
8230 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
8231 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
8232 </pre></blockquote>
8233
8234 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
8235 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
8236 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
8237 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
8238 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
8239 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
8240 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
8241 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
8242 related computer objects.</p>
8243
8244 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
8245 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
8246 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
8247 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
8248 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
8249 like:</p>
8250
8251 <blockquote><pre>
8252 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8253 cn: hostname
8254 objectClass: top
8255 objectClass: dhcpHost
8256 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8257 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
8258 </pre></blockquote>
8259
8260 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
8261 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
8262 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
8263 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
8264 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
8265 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
8266 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
8267 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
8268 structural object class.
8269
8270 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
8271
8272 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
8273 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
8274 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
8275 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
8276 in the configuration.</p>
8277
8278 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
8279 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
8280 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
8281 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
8282 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
8283 structure.</p>
8284
8285 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
8286 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
8287
8288 <blockquote><pre>
8289 ou=services
8290   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
8291     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
8292     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8293       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8294         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8295     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
8296       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
8297         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
8298     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
8299       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
8300 </pre></blockquote>
8301
8302 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
8303 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
8304 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
8305 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
8306
8307 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
8308 like this:</p>
8309
8310 <blockquote><pre>
8311 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8312 dc: hostname
8313 objectClass: top
8314 objectClass: dhcpHost
8315 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8316 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
8317 associateddomain: hostname.intern
8318 arecord: 10.11.12.13
8319 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8320 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
8321 </pre></blockquote>
8322
8323 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
8324 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
8325 auxiliary object class.</p>
8326
8327       </div>
8328       <div class="tags">
8329
8330
8331         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>.
8332
8333
8334       </div>
8335     </div>
8336     <div class="padding"></div>
8337
8338     <div class="entry">
8339       <div class="title">
8340         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
8341       </div>
8342       <div class="date">
8343         14th July 2010
8344       </div>
8345       <div class="body">
8346         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
8347 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
8348 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
8349 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
8350 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
8351
8352 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
8353 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
8354
8355 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
8356 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
8357 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
8358 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
8359 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
8360 to a slave DNS server.</p>
8361
8362 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
8363 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
8364 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
8365 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
8366 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
8367 seem to work.</p>
8368
8369 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
8370 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
8371 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
8372 this:</p>
8373
8374 <blockquote><pre>
8375   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8376   cn: hostname
8377   objectClass: dhcphost
8378   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
8379   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
8380   associateddomain: hostname.intern
8381   arecord: 10.11.12.13
8382   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
8383   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
8384   ldapconfigsound: Y
8385 </pre></blockquote>
8386
8387 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
8388 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
8389 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
8390 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
8391
8392 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
8393 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
8394 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
8395 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
8396 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
8397 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
8398 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
8399 might be a good place to put it.</p>
8400
8401 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8402 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8403
8404       </div>
8405       <div class="tags">
8406
8407
8408         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>.
8409
8410
8411       </div>
8412     </div>
8413     <div class="padding"></div>
8414
8415     <div class="entry">
8416       <div class="title">
8417         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
8418       </div>
8419       <div class="date">
8420         11th July 2010
8421       </div>
8422       <div class="body">
8423         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
8424 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
8425 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
8426 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
8427
8428 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
8429 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
8430 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
8431 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
8432 LTSP clients.</p>
8433
8434 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
8435 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
8436 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
8437
8438 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
8439 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
8440 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
8441
8442 <blockquote><pre>
8443 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
8444 #
8445 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
8446 #
8447 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
8448 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
8449 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
8450 #
8451 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
8452 # existence of attribute names.
8453 #
8454 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
8455 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
8456 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
8457 #
8458 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
8459 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
8460 #
8461 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
8462 #     SUP top
8463 #     AUXILIARY
8464 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
8465
8466 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
8467 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
8468     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
8469     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
8470         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
8471         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
8472             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
8473             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
8474             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
8475             # bass value on to clients
8476             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
8477         done
8478     done
8479 fi
8480 </pre></blockquote>
8481
8482 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
8483 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
8484 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
8485 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
8486 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
8487
8488 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8489 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8490
8491 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
8492 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
8493 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
8494 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
8495 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
8496 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
8497
8498       </div>
8499       <div class="tags">
8500
8501
8502         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>.
8503
8504
8505       </div>
8506     </div>
8507     <div class="padding"></div>
8508
8509     <div class="entry">
8510       <div class="title">
8511         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8512       </div>
8513       <div class="date">
8514          9th July 2010
8515       </div>
8516       <div class="body">
8517         <p>Since
8518 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
8519 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
8520 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
8521 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
8522 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
8523 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
8524 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
8525 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
8526 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
8527 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
8528 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
8529 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
8530 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
8531
8532       </div>
8533       <div class="tags">
8534
8535
8536         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>.
8537
8538
8539       </div>
8540     </div>
8541     <div class="padding"></div>
8542
8543     <div class="entry">
8544       <div class="title">
8545         <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>
8546       </div>
8547       <div class="date">
8548          3rd July 2010
8549       </div>
8550       <div class="body">
8551         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
8552 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
8553 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
8554 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
8555 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
8556 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
8557 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
8558 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
8559
8560 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
8561 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
8562 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
8563 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
8564 publish the difference.</p>
8565
8566 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8567
8568 <blockquote><p>
8569   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8570   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
8571   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
8572   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8573   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
8574   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8575   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
8576   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
8577 </p></blockquote>
8578
8579 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8580
8581 <blockquote><p>
8582   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
8583   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
8584   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
8585   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
8586   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
8587   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
8588   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8589   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
8590   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8591   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8592   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
8593   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
8594   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
8595   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
8596   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
8597   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
8598   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
8599   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
8600   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
8601   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
8602 </p></blockquote>
8603
8604 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8605
8606 <blockquote><p>
8607   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
8608   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
8609   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8610   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8611   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
8612   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
8613   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
8614   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8615   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8616   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8617   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8618   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
8619   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
8620   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
8621   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
8622   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
8623   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
8624   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
8625   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
8626   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
8627   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
8628 </p></blockquote>
8629
8630 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8631
8632 <blockquote><p>
8633   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
8634   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
8635   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
8636 </p></blockquote>
8637
8638 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
8639 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
8640 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
8641 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
8642 the difference somewhat.
8643
8644       </div>
8645       <div class="tags">
8646
8647
8648         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>.
8649
8650
8651       </div>
8652     </div>
8653     <div class="padding"></div>
8654
8655     <div class="entry">
8656       <div class="title">
8657         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
8658       </div>
8659       <div class="date">
8660         28th June 2010
8661       </div>
8662       <div class="body">
8663         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
8664 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
8665 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
8666 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
8667 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
8668 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
8669 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
8670 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
8671 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
8672 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
8673
8674 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
8675 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
8676 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
8677 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
8678 released.</p>
8679
8680 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
8681 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
8682 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
8683 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
8684
8685 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
8686 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8687
8688 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
8689 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
8690 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
8691 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
8692 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
8693
8694       </div>
8695       <div class="tags">
8696
8697
8698         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>.
8699
8700
8701       </div>
8702     </div>
8703     <div class="padding"></div>
8704
8705     <div class="entry">
8706       <div class="title">
8707         <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>
8708       </div>
8709       <div class="date">
8710         24th June 2010
8711       </div>
8712       <div class="body">
8713         <p>A while back, I
8714 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
8715 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
8716 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
8717 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
8718
8719 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
8720 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
8721 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
8722 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
8723
8724 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
8725 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
8726 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
8727 Debian Edu.</p>
8728
8729 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
8730 the
8731 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
8732 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
8733 available today from IETF.</p>
8734
8735 <pre>
8736 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
8737 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
8738 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
8739  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
8740         NAME 'dhcpHost'
8741         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
8742 -       SUP top
8743 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
8744         MUST cn
8745         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
8746         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
8747 </pre>
8748
8749 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
8750 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
8751 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
8752
8753 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
8754 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
8755
8756       </div>
8757       <div class="tags">
8758
8759
8760         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>.
8761
8762
8763       </div>
8764     </div>
8765     <div class="padding"></div>
8766
8767     <div class="entry">
8768       <div class="title">
8769         <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>
8770       </div>
8771       <div class="date">
8772         16th June 2010
8773       </div>
8774       <div class="body">
8775         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
8776 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
8777 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
8778 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
8779 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
8780 this:
8781
8782 <blockquote><pre>
8783 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8784 tasksel --new-install
8785 </pre></blockquote>
8786
8787 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
8788 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
8789 any output what so ever.
8790
8791 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
8792 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
8793 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
8794 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
8795 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
8796 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
8797 code like this:
8798
8799 <blockquote><pre>
8800 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
8801 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
8802 $cmd
8803 </pre></blockquote>
8804
8805 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
8806 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
8807 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
8808 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
8809 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
8810 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
8811 installation.</p>
8812
8813 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
8814 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
8815 like this.</p>
8816
8817       </div>
8818       <div class="tags">
8819
8820
8821         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>.
8822
8823
8824       </div>
8825     </div>
8826     <div class="padding"></div>
8827
8828     <div class="entry">
8829       <div class="title">
8830         <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>
8831       </div>
8832       <div class="date">
8833         13th June 2010
8834       </div>
8835       <div class="body">
8836         <p>My
8837 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
8838 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
8839 finally made the upgrade logs available from
8840 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
8841 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
8842 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
8843 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
8844
8845 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
8846 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
8847 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
8848 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
8849 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
8850 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
8851 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
8852 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
8853
8854 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
8855 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
8856 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
8857 too surprising.</p>
8858
8859 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
8860 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
8861 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
8862 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
8863 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
8864 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
8865 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
8866 continue.</p>
8867
8868 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
8869 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
8870   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
8871   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
8872   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
8873   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
8874   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
8875   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8876   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8877   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
8878   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
8879   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
8880   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
8881   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8882   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8883   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8884   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8885   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8886   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
8887   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
8888   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
8889   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
8890   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
8891   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
8892   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
8893   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
8894   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
8895   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
8896   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
8897   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
8898
8899 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
8900
8901 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
8902   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
8903   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
8904   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
8905   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
8906   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
8907   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
8908   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
8909   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
8910   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
8911   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8912   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
8913   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
8914   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
8915   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
8916   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
8917   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
8918   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
8919   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
8920   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
8921   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
8922   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
8923   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
8924   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
8925   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
8926   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
8927   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
8928   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
8929   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
8930   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8931   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
8932   zip</p>
8933
8934 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
8935
8936 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
8937   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
8938   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
8939   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
8940   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
8941   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
8942   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
8943   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
8944   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
8945   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
8946   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
8947   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
8948   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
8949   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
8950   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
8951   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
8952   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
8953   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
8954   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
8955   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
8956   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
8957   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
8958   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
8959   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
8960   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
8961   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
8962   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
8963   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
8964
8965 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
8966 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
8967   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8968   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
8969   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
8970   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8971   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
8972   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
8973   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8974   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
8975   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
8976   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
8977   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
8978   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
8979   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
8980   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
8981   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
8982   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
8983   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
8984   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
8985   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
8986   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
8987   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
8988   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
8989   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
8990   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
8991   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
8992   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
8993   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
8994   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
8995   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
8996   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
8997   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
8998   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
8999   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
9000   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
9001   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
9002   xulrunner-1.9</p>
9003
9004
9005       </div>
9006       <div class="tags">
9007
9008
9009         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>.
9010
9011
9012       </div>
9013     </div>
9014     <div class="padding"></div>
9015
9016     <div class="entry">
9017       <div class="title">
9018         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
9019       </div>
9020       <div class="date">
9021         11th June 2010
9022       </div>
9023       <div class="body">
9024         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
9025 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
9026 have been discovered and reported in the process
9027 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
9028 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
9029 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
9030 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
9031 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
9032
9033 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
9034 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
9035 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
9036 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
9037 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
9038 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
9039
9040 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
9041 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
9042 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9043 is created.  The bug report
9044 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
9045 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
9046 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
9047 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
9048 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
9049 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
9050 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
9051 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
9052 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
9053 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
9054 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
9055 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
9056 Debian Squeeze.</p>
9057
9058 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
9059 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
9060 trick:</p>
9061
9062 <blockquote><pre>
9063 #!/bin/sh
9064 set -ex
9065
9066 if [ "$1" ] ; then
9067     desktop=$1
9068 else
9069     desktop=gnome
9070 fi
9071
9072 from=lenny
9073 to=squeeze
9074
9075 exec &lt; /dev/null
9076 unset LANG
9077 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
9078 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
9079 fuser -mv .
9080 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
9081 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9082 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
9083 #!/bin/sh
9084 exit 101
9085 EOF
9086 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
9087 exit_cleanup() {
9088     umount $tmpdir/proc
9089 }
9090 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
9091 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
9092 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
9093
9094 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
9095
9096 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
9097 # to return the correct answers.
9098 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
9099     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
9100
9101 # Include the desktop and laptop task
9102 for test in desktop laptop ; do
9103     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
9104 #!/bin/sh
9105 exit 2
9106 EOF
9107     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
9108 done
9109
9110 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
9111 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
9112 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
9113 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
9114
9115 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
9116 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
9117 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
9118 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
9119 fuser -mv
9120 </pre></blockquote>
9121
9122 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
9123 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
9124 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
9125 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
9126 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
9127 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
9128
9129 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
9130 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
9131 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
9132 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
9133 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
9134 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
9135 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
9136
9137 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
9138 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
9139 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
9140 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
9141 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
9142 packages.</p>
9143
9144       </div>
9145       <div class="tags">
9146
9147
9148         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>.
9149
9150
9151       </div>
9152     </div>
9153     <div class="padding"></div>
9154
9155     <div class="entry">
9156       <div class="title">
9157         <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>
9158       </div>
9159       <div class="date">
9160          6th June 2010
9161       </div>
9162       <div class="body">
9163         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
9164 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
9165 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
9166 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
9167 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
9168 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
9169 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
9170
9171 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
9172 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
9173 COLUMNS):</p>
9174
9175 <blockquote><pre>
9176 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
9177 previous=N
9178 PREVLEVEL=
9179 RUNLEVEL=
9180 runlevel=S
9181 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
9182 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
9183 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
9184 </pre></blockquote>
9185
9186 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
9187 script.</p>
9188
9189 <blockquote><pre>
9190 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
9191 previous=N
9192 PREVLEVEL=N
9193 RUNLEVEL=S
9194 runlevel=S
9195 </pre></blockquote>
9196
9197 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
9198 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
9199 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
9200
9201 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
9202 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
9203 choice.</p>
9204
9205       </div>
9206       <div class="tags">
9207
9208
9209         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>.
9210
9211
9212       </div>
9213     </div>
9214     <div class="padding"></div>
9215
9216     <div class="entry">
9217       <div class="title">
9218         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
9219       </div>
9220       <div class="date">
9221          6th June 2010
9222       </div>
9223       <div class="body">
9224         <p>Via the
9225 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
9226 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
9227 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
9228 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
9229 following the standards wars of today.</p>
9230
9231       </div>
9232       <div class="tags">
9233
9234
9235         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>.
9236
9237
9238       </div>
9239     </div>
9240     <div class="padding"></div>
9241
9242     <div class="entry">
9243       <div class="title">
9244         <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>
9245       </div>
9246       <div class="date">
9247          3rd June 2010
9248       </div>
9249       <div class="body">
9250         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
9251 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
9252 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
9253 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
9254 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
9255
9256 <blockquote><pre>
9257 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
9258   vendor                    count
9259   Dell Computer Corporation     1
9260     PowerEdge 1750              1
9261   IBM                           1
9262     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
9263   Intel                         2
9264   [no-dmi-info]                 3
9265 maintainer:~#
9266 </pre></blockquote>
9267
9268 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
9269 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
9270 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
9271 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
9272 option to list the individual machines.</p>
9273
9274 <p>A larger list is
9275 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
9276 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
9277 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
9278 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
9279 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
9280 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
9281 collector.</p>
9282
9283       </div>
9284       <div class="tags">
9285
9286
9287         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>.
9288
9289
9290       </div>
9291     </div>
9292     <div class="padding"></div>
9293
9294     <div class="entry">
9295       <div class="title">
9296         <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>
9297       </div>
9298       <div class="date">
9299          1st June 2010
9300       </div>
9301       <div class="body">
9302         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
9303 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
9304 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
9305 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
9306 wait.</p>
9307
9308 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
9309 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
9310 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
9311 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
9312 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
9313 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
9314
9315 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
9316 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
9317 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
9318 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
9319 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
9320 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
9321 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
9322 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
9323
9324 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
9325
9326       </div>
9327       <div class="tags">
9328
9329
9330         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>.
9331
9332
9333       </div>
9334     </div>
9335     <div class="padding"></div>
9336
9337     <div class="entry">
9338       <div class="title">
9339         <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>
9340       </div>
9341       <div class="date">
9342         27th May 2010
9343       </div>
9344       <div class="body">
9345         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
9346 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
9347 issues are known and should be solved:
9348
9349 <p><ul>
9350
9351 <li>The wicd package seen to
9352 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
9353 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
9354 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
9355 seem to be on the case.</li>
9356
9357 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
9358 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
9359 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
9360 maintainer is on the case.</li>
9361
9362 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
9363 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
9364 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
9365 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
9366 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
9367 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
9368 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
9369 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
9370
9371 </ul></p>
9372
9373 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
9374 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
9375 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
9376 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
9377
9378 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9379 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9380 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9381 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9382
9383 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
9384
9385       </div>
9386       <div class="tags">
9387
9388
9389         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>.
9390
9391
9392       </div>
9393     </div>
9394     <div class="padding"></div>
9395
9396     <div class="entry">
9397       <div class="title">
9398         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
9399       </div>
9400       <div class="date">
9401         22nd May 2010
9402       </div>
9403       <div class="body">
9404         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
9405 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
9406 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
9407 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
9408
9409 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
9410 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
9411 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
9412 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
9413 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
9414 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
9415 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
9416 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
9417 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
9418 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
9419 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
9420 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
9421 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
9422 going to work.</p>
9423
9424 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
9425 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
9426 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
9427 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
9428 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
9429 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
9430 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
9431 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
9432 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
9433 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
9434 Edu.</p>
9435
9436 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
9437 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
9438 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
9439 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
9440 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
9441 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
9442
9443 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
9444 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
9445
9446       </div>
9447       <div class="tags">
9448
9449
9450         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>.
9451
9452
9453       </div>
9454     </div>
9455     <div class="padding"></div>
9456
9457     <div class="entry">
9458       <div class="title">
9459         <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>
9460       </div>
9461       <div class="date">
9462         14th May 2010
9463       </div>
9464       <div class="body">
9465         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
9466 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
9467 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
9468 expected, if I am to believe the
9469 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9470 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
9471 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
9472 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
9473 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
9474 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
9475 version.</p>
9476
9477 More information about
9478 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9479 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
9480 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
9481 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
9482
9483 <blockquote><pre>
9484 CONCURRENCY=none
9485 </pre></blockquote>
9486
9487 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9488 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9489 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9490 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9491
9492       </div>
9493       <div class="tags">
9494
9495
9496         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>.
9497
9498
9499       </div>
9500     </div>
9501     <div class="padding"></div>
9502
9503     <div class="entry">
9504       <div class="title">
9505         <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>
9506       </div>
9507       <div class="date">
9508         14th May 2010
9509       </div>
9510       <div class="body">
9511         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
9512 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
9513 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
9514 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
9515 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
9516 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
9517 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
9518 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
9519
9520 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
9521 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
9522 this on the collector host:</p>
9523
9524 <blockquote><pre>
9525 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
9526 </pre></blockquote>
9527
9528 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
9529 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
9530
9531 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
9532 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
9533 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
9534 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
9535 written yet.</p>
9536
9537       </div>
9538       <div class="tags">
9539
9540
9541         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>.
9542
9543
9544       </div>
9545     </div>
9546     <div class="padding"></div>
9547
9548     <div class="entry">
9549       <div class="title">
9550         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
9551       </div>
9552       <div class="date">
9553         13th May 2010
9554       </div>
9555       <div class="body">
9556         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
9557 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
9558 has been
9559 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
9560
9561 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
9562 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
9563 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
9564 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
9565 based boot system.  Tollef is
9566 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
9567 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
9568 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
9569 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
9570 at the moment do not.</p>
9571
9572 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
9573 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
9574 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
9575 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
9576 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
9577 way forward.</p>
9578
9579 <p>In the mean time, based on the
9580 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
9581 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
9582 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
9583 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
9584 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
9585 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
9586 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
9587 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
9588
9589       </div>
9590       <div class="tags">
9591
9592
9593         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>.
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/Parallellizing_the_boot_in_Debian_Squeeze___ready_for_wider_testing.html">Parallellizing the boot in Debian Squeeze - ready for wider testing</a>
9603       </div>
9604       <div class="date">
9605          6th May 2010
9606       </div>
9607       <div class="body">
9608         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
9609 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
9610 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
9611 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
9612 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9613 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
9614 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
9615
9616 <blockquote><pre>
9617 CONCURRENCY=makefile
9618 </pre></blockquote>
9619
9620 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
9621 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
9622 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
9623 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
9624 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
9625 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
9626 make this happen.</p>
9627
9628 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
9629 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
9630 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
9631 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
9632 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
9633
9634 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
9635 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
9636 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
9637 fix the remaining issues.</p>
9638
9639 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
9640 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
9641 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
9642 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
9643
9644       </div>
9645       <div class="tags">
9646
9647
9648         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>.
9649
9650
9651       </div>
9652     </div>
9653     <div class="padding"></div>
9654
9655     <div class="entry">
9656       <div class="title">
9657         <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>
9658       </div>
9659       <div class="date">
9660         27th July 2009
9661       </div>
9662       <div class="body">
9663         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
9664 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
9665 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
9666 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
9667 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
9668 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
9669 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
9670
9671 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
9672 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
9673 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
9674
9675       </div>
9676       <div class="tags">
9677
9678
9679         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>.
9680
9681
9682       </div>
9683     </div>
9684     <div class="padding"></div>
9685
9686     <div class="entry">
9687       <div class="title">
9688         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
9689       </div>
9690       <div class="date">
9691         22nd July 2009
9692       </div>
9693       <div class="body">
9694         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
9695 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
9696 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
9697 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
9698 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
9699 the package up to date.</p>
9700
9701 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
9702 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
9703 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
9704 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
9705 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
9706 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
9707 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
9708 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
9709 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
9710 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
9711 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
9712 working on the future release.</p>
9713
9714 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
9715 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
9716
9717       </div>
9718       <div class="tags">
9719
9720
9721         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>.
9722
9723
9724       </div>
9725     </div>
9726     <div class="padding"></div>
9727
9728     <div class="entry">
9729       <div class="title">
9730         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
9731       </div>
9732       <div class="date">
9733         24th June 2009
9734       </div>
9735       <div class="body">
9736         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
9737 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
9738 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
9739 funded
9740 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
9741 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
9742 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
9743 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
9744 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
9745 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
9746
9747 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
9748 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
9749 boot:</p>
9750
9751 <ul>
9752
9753 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
9754
9755 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
9756    clock is in UTC.</li>
9757
9758 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
9759    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
9760    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
9761
9762 </ul>
9763
9764 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
9765 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
9766 Villegas</a>.
9767
9768 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
9769 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
9770 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
9771 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
9772 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
9773 using this.</p>
9774
9775 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
9776 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
9777 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
9778 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
9779 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
9780 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
9781 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
9782
9783       </div>
9784       <div class="tags">
9785
9786
9787         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>.
9788
9789
9790       </div>
9791     </div>
9792     <div class="padding"></div>
9793
9794     <div class="entry">
9795       <div class="title">
9796         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
9797       </div>
9798       <div class="date">
9799         17th May 2009
9800       </div>
9801       <div class="body">
9802         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
9803 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
9804 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
9805 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
9806 dager siden kom
9807 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
9808 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
9809 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
9810 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
9811 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
9812
9813 <blockquote>
9814 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
9815 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
9816 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
9817 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
9818 </blockquote>
9819
9820 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
9821 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
9822 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
9823 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
9824 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
9825
9826 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
9827 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
9828 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
9829
9830       </div>
9831       <div class="tags">
9832
9833
9834         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
9835
9836
9837       </div>
9838     </div>
9839     <div class="padding"></div>
9840
9841     <div class="entry">
9842       <div class="title">
9843         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
9844       </div>
9845       <div class="date">
9846          7th May 2009
9847       </div>
9848       <div class="body">
9849         <p>Kom over
9850 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
9851 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
9852 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
9853 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
9854 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
9855 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
9856 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
9857
9858       </div>
9859       <div class="tags">
9860
9861
9862         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9863
9864
9865       </div>
9866     </div>
9867     <div class="padding"></div>
9868
9869     <div class="entry">
9870       <div class="title">
9871         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
9872       </div>
9873       <div class="date">
9874          2nd May 2009
9875       </div>
9876       <div class="body">
9877         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
9878 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
9879 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
9880 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
9881 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
9882 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
9883 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
9884 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
9885 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
9886 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
9887 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
9888 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
9889 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
9890 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
9891 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
9892 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
9893 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
9894 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
9895 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
9896 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
9897
9898 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
9899 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
9900 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
9901 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
9902 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
9903 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
9904 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
9905 betydelige.</p>
9906
9907       </div>
9908       <div class="tags">
9909
9910
9911         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
9912
9913
9914       </div>
9915     </div>
9916     <div class="padding"></div>
9917
9918     <div class="entry">
9919       <div class="title">
9920         <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>
9921       </div>
9922       <div class="date">
9923          2nd May 2009
9924       </div>
9925       <div class="body">
9926         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
9927 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
9928 do not yet know them.</p>
9929
9930 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
9931 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
9932 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
9933 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
9934 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
9935 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
9936 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
9937 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
9938 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
9939 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
9940 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
9941
9942 <p>The second one is
9943 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
9944 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
9945 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
9946 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
9947 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
9948 and the company behind it is running
9949 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
9950 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
9951 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
9952 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
9953 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
9954 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
9955 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
9956 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
9957
9958 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
9959 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
9960 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
9961 surrounded by today.</p>
9962
9963       </div>
9964       <div class="tags">
9965
9966
9967         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>.
9968
9969
9970       </div>
9971     </div>
9972     <div class="padding"></div>
9973
9974     <div class="entry">
9975       <div class="title">
9976         <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>
9977       </div>
9978       <div class="date">
9979         28th April 2009
9980       </div>
9981       <div class="body">
9982         <p>Julien Blache
9983 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
9984 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
9985 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
9986 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
9987 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
9988 properties.</p>
9989
9990       </div>
9991       <div class="tags">
9992
9993
9994         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>.
9995
9996
9997       </div>
9998     </div>
9999     <div class="padding"></div>
10000
10001     <div class="entry">
10002       <div class="title">
10003         <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>
10004       </div>
10005       <div class="date">
10006         30th March 2009
10007       </div>
10008       <div class="body">
10009         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
10010 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
10011 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
10012 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
10013 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
10014 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
10015 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
10016 application.</p>
10017
10018 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
10019 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
10020 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
10021 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
10022 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
10023 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
10024 blocked from doing so.</p>
10025
10026 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
10027 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
10028 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
10029 requirements change.</p>
10030
10031 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
10032 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
10033 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
10034
10035       </div>
10036       <div class="tags">
10037
10038
10039         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>.
10040
10041
10042       </div>
10043     </div>
10044     <div class="padding"></div>
10045
10046     <div class="entry">
10047       <div class="title">
10048         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
10049       </div>
10050       <div class="date">
10051         29th March 2009
10052       </div>
10053       <div class="body">
10054         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
10055 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
10056 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
10057 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
10058 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
10059 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
10060 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
10061 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
10062 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
10063 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
10064 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
10065 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
10066 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
10067 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
10068 now. :)</p>
10069
10070       </div>
10071       <div class="tags">
10072
10073
10074         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>.
10075
10076
10077       </div>
10078     </div>
10079     <div class="padding"></div>
10080
10081     <div class="entry">
10082       <div class="title">
10083         <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>
10084       </div>
10085       <div class="date">
10086         29th March 2009
10087       </div>
10088       <div class="body">
10089         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
10090 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
10091 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
10092 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
10093 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
10094 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
10095
10096 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
10097 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
10098 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
10099 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
10100 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
10101 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
10102 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
10103 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
10104 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
10105 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
10106 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
10107 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
10108 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
10109
10110 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
10111 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
10112 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
10113 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
10114
10115 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
10116 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
10117
10118 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
10119 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
10120 new IETF work group?</p>
10121
10122       </div>
10123       <div class="tags">
10124
10125
10126         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>.
10127
10128
10129       </div>
10130     </div>
10131     <div class="padding"></div>
10132
10133     <div class="entry">
10134       <div class="title">
10135         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
10136       </div>
10137       <div class="date">
10138         15th February 2009
10139       </div>
10140       <div class="body">
10141         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
10142 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
10143 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
10144 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
10145 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
10146 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
10147 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
10148 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
10149 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
10150 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
10151 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
10152 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
10153
10154       </div>
10155       <div class="tags">
10156
10157
10158         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
10159
10160
10161       </div>
10162     </div>
10163     <div class="padding"></div>
10164
10165     <div class="entry">
10166       <div class="title">
10167         <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>
10168       </div>
10169       <div class="date">
10170          7th December 2008
10171       </div>
10172       <div class="body">
10173         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
10174 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
10175 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
10176 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
10177 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
10178 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
10179 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
10180 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
10181
10182 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
10183 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
10184 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
10185 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
10186 of these cards.</p>
10187
10188       </div>
10189       <div class="tags">
10190
10191
10192         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>.
10193
10194
10195       </div>
10196     </div>
10197     <div class="padding"></div>
10198
10199     <div class="entry">
10200       <div class="title">
10201         <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>
10202       </div>
10203       <div class="date">
10204         25th November 2008
10205       </div>
10206       <div class="body">
10207         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
10208 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
10209 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
10210 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
10211 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
10212 notes are available on
10213 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
10214 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
10215 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
10216 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
10217 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
10218 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
10219 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
10220 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
10221 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
10222
10223 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
10224 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
10225
10226       </div>
10227       <div class="tags">
10228
10229
10230         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>.
10231
10232
10233       </div>
10234     </div>
10235     <div class="padding"></div>
10236
10237     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
10238     <div id="sidebar">
10239
10240
10241
10242 <h2>Archive</h2>
10243 <ul>
10244
10245 <li>2016
10246 <ul>
10247
10248 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
10249
10250 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
10251
10252 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
10253
10254 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (5)</a></li>
10255
10256 </ul></li>
10257
10258 <li>2015
10259 <ul>
10260
10261 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
10262
10263 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
10264
10265 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
10266
10267 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
10268
10269 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
10270
10271 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
10272
10273 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
10274
10275 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
10276
10277 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
10278
10279 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
10280
10281 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
10282
10283 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10284
10285 </ul></li>
10286
10287 <li>2014
10288 <ul>
10289
10290 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
10291
10292 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
10293
10294 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
10295
10296 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
10297
10298 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
10299
10300 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
10301
10302 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
10303
10304 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
10305
10306 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
10307
10308 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
10309
10310 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10311
10312 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
10313
10314 </ul></li>
10315
10316 <li>2013
10317 <ul>
10318
10319 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
10320
10321 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
10322
10323 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
10324
10325 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
10326
10327 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10328
10329 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
10330
10331 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
10332
10333 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
10334
10335 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
10336
10337 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
10338
10339 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
10340
10341 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10342
10343 </ul></li>
10344
10345 <li>2012
10346 <ul>
10347
10348 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
10349
10350 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
10351
10352 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
10353
10354 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
10355
10356 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
10357
10358 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
10359
10360 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
10361
10362 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
10363
10364 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
10365
10366 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
10367
10368 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
10369
10370 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
10371
10372 </ul></li>
10373
10374 <li>2011
10375 <ul>
10376
10377 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
10378
10379 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
10380
10381 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
10382
10383 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
10384
10385 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
10386
10387 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
10388
10389 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
10390
10391 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
10392
10393 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
10394
10395 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
10396
10397 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10398
10399 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
10400
10401 </ul></li>
10402
10403 <li>2010
10404 <ul>
10405
10406 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
10407
10408 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
10409
10410 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
10411
10412 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
10413
10414 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10415
10416 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
10417
10418 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
10419
10420 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
10421
10422 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
10423
10424 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
10425
10426 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
10427
10428 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
10429
10430 </ul></li>
10431
10432 <li>2009
10433 <ul>
10434
10435 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
10436
10437 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
10438
10439 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
10440
10441 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
10442
10443 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
10444
10445 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
10446
10447 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
10448
10449 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
10450
10451 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
10452
10453 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
10454
10455 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
10456
10457 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
10458
10459 </ul></li>
10460
10461 <li>2008
10462 <ul>
10463
10464 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
10465
10466 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
10467
10468 </ul></li>
10469
10470 </ul>
10471
10472
10473
10474 <h2>Tags</h2>
10475 <ul>
10476
10477  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
10478
10479  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
10480
10481  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
10482
10483  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
10484
10485  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
10486
10487  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
10488
10489  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
10490
10491  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
10492
10493  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (124)</a></li>
10494
10495  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (154)</a></li>
10496
10497  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
10498
10499  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
10500
10501  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (21)</a></li>
10502
10503  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
10504
10505  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (309)</a></li>
10506
10507  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
10508
10509  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
10510
10511  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (26)</a></li>
10512
10513  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
10514
10515  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
10516
10517  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
10518
10519  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
10520
10521  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (11)</a></li>
10522
10523  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
10524
10525  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
10526
10527  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
10528
10529  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
10530
10531  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
10532
10533  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
10534
10535  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (37)</a></li>
10536
10537  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (7)</a></li>
10538
10539  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (274)</a></li>
10540
10541  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (178)</a></li>
10542
10543  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (23)</a></li>
10544
10545  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
10546
10547  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (58)</a></li>
10548
10549  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (92)</a></li>
10550
10551  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
10552
10553  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
10554
10555  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
10556
10557  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
10558
10559  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
10560
10561  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
10562
10563  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
10564
10565  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
10566
10567  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (46)</a></li>
10568
10569  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
10570
10571  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
10572
10573  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (49)</a></li>
10574
10575  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
10576
10577  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (10)</a></li>
10578
10579  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (36)</a></li>
10580
10581  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
10582
10583  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
10584
10585  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
10586
10587  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (55)</a></li>
10588
10589  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
10590
10591  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (38)</a></li>
10592
10593 </ul>
10594
10595
10596     </div>
10597     <p style="text-align: right">
10598  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
10599 </p>
10600
10601   </body>
10602 </html>